Friday, May 25, 2007

Pirates of the Carribean 3

Not much love for the new one. I wish I could say I was interested enough to care but I'm kind of pirated out.

The first one was incredibly entertaining if for no other reason than, you didn't really expect it to be any good at all. And Johnny Depp really seemed to be pulling one over on the filmmakers with his idiosyncratic performance. But like a lot of good movies, it was a really a happy accident and not anything they should have tried to repeat, much less blow up into a big franchise. I have yet to sit through it on DVD because all the pleasures of the film are in the surprises and discoveries, and they just don't hold up to repeated viewings.

The second movie does some fun things early on, but destroys all of the good will mid way through when our heroes turn on each other (and the audience) in a stupefyingly long three way chase and duel for the eponymous chest and its mysterious contents. Not even a swooning Keira Knightly can stop the male leads and the filmmakers from sinking the entire enterprise in this overlong and ultimately pointless sequence.

From that moment on you're pretty much staring at the screen watching the images pass by without any sense of engagement or interest. It's the most passive I've felt watching a movie since Van Helsing (my pick for the worst movie of all time).

The new one looks like more of the same. I think I'll give it a miss.