Chow Yun-Fat is not amused by fake, fey British accents.
If the bland, empty-calorie feast that was Spider-Man 3 didn’t quite quell your appetite for summer blockbuster gut-bombs, then choke on this: At an ass- and bladder-punishing two hours and 48 minutes, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End clocks in this particular film franchise at just under seven hours total—or roughly 28 times as long (and not half as fun) as the Disneyland ride that inspired it. Talk about your law of diminishing returns.
At least for people who like a good time at the movies, that is; marketing momentum alone—to say nothing of blind consumer loyalty—is likely to make this third go-’round as happily lucrative for Disney as the first two POTC entries. Allow me, then, to do my part to bankrupt the heirs to Uncle Walt and spare you a dutiful but disappointing trip to the multiplex: Even if you loved The Curse of the Black Pearl and Dead Man’s Chest, this dour, tedious, aggressively unfunny, egregiously padded helping of celluloid fluff will only waste your time and money. Save your dough and sanity for a trip to Anaheim—or, if you must, Orlando—instead.
For completists and masochists and the otherwise skeptical, here are the details: At World’s End picks up, as these things tend to do, roughly where its slightly less inflated predecessor ended, with Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley, whose cheekbones are the movie’s most memorable special effect) allied with Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) and the surviving swabbies of the Black Pearl to rescue Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) from the very euphemistically named Davy Jones’ locker. The gang also hooks up with Sao Feng (the seriously underused Chow Yun-Fat), a Chinese pirate captain whose crew disturbingly provides the bulk of the cannon fodder for the battle sequences, and Swann’s erstwhile daddy-issue-baggage-toting fiancé, Will Turner (Orlando Bloom). Before being offered an extended tour of Sparrow’s curious purgatory, which recalls nothing so much as a scene from Being John Malkovich overrun by helpful crustaceans, the sundry protags cook up a confusing scheme involving “the nine pirate lords,” the goddess Calypso and—in one of the film’s few genuinely enjoyable diversions—a cameo by Keith Richards. The playing out of said plan makes up the bulk of the story, in which potentially pivotal characters come and go, plot threads unravel all over each other, betrayal piles upon betrayal, and exhaustion sets in pronto. By the climactic seagoing showdown, I’ll be damned if it doesn’t feel like you’re trudging up that f--king mountain in the interminable final hour of the last (I hope) Lord of the Rings movie all over again.
Clearly, one of the problems with stretching so inelastic a premise so thin is that narrative convolution takes the place of astute story development. When precisely did movies start aping the serial structure of TV series, anyway? (Don’t feel compelled to answer that.) It’s one thing to ask audiences to remember the details of an hour-long show from week to week, but expecting anyone to hold the minutiae of an aimless theme-park-ride-based epic in their heads over several years is foolhardy and absurd. It also ensures reel after reel of expository dialogue, but that’s hardly the only thing dragging At World’s End down.
The CG visuals are impressive and as seamless as any I’ve seen, but—to employ a musty but accurate complaint—such tricks are so adept at fooling the eye that they leave little or nothing for the imagination to contribute. In such a context, even game scenery-chewers like Bill Nighy (who returns as the tentacle-pussed Jones), Rush, Stellan Skarsgard and, of course, Depp have to work overtime to make an impression; in Johnny’s case, it takes several of him to manage the task.
Pity. At World’s End and POTC in general are couched in a winning, tried-and-true American narrative in which scrappy, lower-class multi-culti types double as the salt-of-the-earth good guys. Hell, there’s even a dose of muted Christian symbolism (people coming back from the dead and all that) for the Bible-thumpers. But in a project this money-engorged and ego-laden, such a promising framework is for naught. At this point, you’d think the whole tired, bloated mess would’ve beached itself, but there’s already talk of a fourth installment. Shiver my timbers, indeed.
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End *
Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Geoffrey Rush, Bill Nighy, Chow Yun-Fat, Stellan Skarsgard
Directed by Gore Verbinski
Rated PG-13
Opens Friday