Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

You have to give it to the third Pirates movie: you can see and hear each and every dollar in it. Really loudly. Which is unusual in popcorn movies lately. Production design, effects, Zimmer’s music, the camerawork... On the technical side, almost nothing to fault. The running time certainly is over-long, there isn’t much of a screenplay and so it dwells in the “everybody plotting against everybody else" bracket. But where part two dawdled about in androgynous family entertainment going nowhere, here the Pirates have become darker and the protagonists have moved from the black and white into the gray character zone where nobody wears a halo. And that’s good, because hand in hand with it becoming more “serious", there is less humor, mainly of the infantile type. Not that it disappeared completely, but it isn’t humor at all costs like last time. And also the Jack character takes a rear seat, which is a significant improvement and does much to rehabilitate the Sparrow figure itself. The space left by him is taken up more than skillfully by Rush. And still, we get humor; “Larry" is a Monty Python caliber gag. It mainly depends what you want out of the third Pirates - if it’s some harmless way of spending time with the whole family, like the first two parts, then you will be disappointed. If it’s technically precise viewing that, despite a few little flaws (or sometimes huge ones - pointless storylines, animal escapades, multiJack etc.), is bursting with just the right pirate feel to it, then you could give this episode a go... And the neat homage to Leone and Morricone warms the heart. (24/05/2007)

The opening sequence is great, the bouncing between disparate locations is filled with a satisfying amount of jokes, the production design is eye-pleasing and Geoffrey Rush is thoroughly enjoying his poorly explained comeback. But there’s something now that feels wrong. The story goes on for a frighteningly long time towards the first (saving Jack) and second (getting out of the place from which there is no escape) goals, foreshadowing the already genuinely scary middle part, which crumbles the awkwardly paced plot between a bunch of characters acting independently and often incomprehensibly, whose scheming and subterfuge may look clever on paper but in an expensive blockbuster are as ineffectual as a guy arriving for a first date with a haircut like Adolf Hitler. And of course, the whole thing drags on like a crowd of pensioners at a Kaufland discount. Fortunately, the ending is worth the wait and the carnage at sea looks as breathtaking as the technical innovations allow, which makes the amount of unnecessary filler all the more regrettable, as it doesn’t move the film anywhere and only bluntly pushes it to achieve the attribute of GREAT by, among other things, its own bloated runtime… (07/03/2017)

The plot twists and the chattiness of the trio of “Pirates” remind me a lot of our glorious parliament. Endless quarrels and fights, here played for the eye of the spectator, here meant seriously; on the outside they appear as irreconcilable rivals, but behind the scenes, out of the public eye, they even toast each other with "pirate rum", at one moment they are falling each other's arms, and the next they could stab each other in the back and nobody would be any wiser. The admirable precision of the production design and visual effects deserves praise, the final battle raises the overall impression a lot, but it's more than two hours long! With all that politics the creators deserve to be flogged. Or better still, they should be condemned to smell Jack Sparrow’s socks for two weeks in a row. (22/12/2007)

Almost three hours of mismanaged megalomania that has nothing to do with good entertainment. Verbinski couldn't pull off the digital ridiculousness, so he just put scenes together scenes one after the other without any invention. There is an incredible mess between the characters, the backstabbing gets boring after a while, and the amount of perspective inherent in the previous two films is sorely lacking. If it were half an hour shorter, it would be the blockbuster of the year, but this is a pompous bore that grabs your attention only with a reference to Leone and a funny cameo by Keith Richards. (30/11/2007)

161 minutes??? Am I being punished for something? Spectacular and dazzling, and this time also awfully dull and dumb. The story, if there is a story to speak of, was literally oversaturated with characters. There were so many captains only Captain America and Captain Morgan were missing but no room left for a watchable plot. The screenplay was flat and annoying. The Will and Elizabeth romance ran through the whole film, but I couldn’t care less about it. Orlando Bloom played his usual self and Keira Knightley’s performance wasn't anything special either. Her motivational speech, for instance, was enough to put you to sleep. Johnny Depp’s acting seemed like he had heard that speech at least three times. Poor. (15/12/2016)