 |
| My
hat is way cuter than yours: (l-r) Knightley and Depp
in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. |
Yo-Ho
Hum, Again
By
Ann Morrow
Pirates
of the Caribbean: At World’s End
Directed
by Gore Verbinski
For
the third and hopefully, er, supposedly, final chapter in
the misadventures of Capt. Jack Sparrow, Pirates of
the Caribbean: At World’s End, director Gore Verbinski
apparently ran out of inspiration and went with the tried-and-tired
sequel gambit of more is more. It isn’t. Lumbering and curiously
devoid of excitement, At World’s End is an expensive-
looking exercise in wretched excess—two hours and 47 minutes’
worth. Unlike the first Pirates, which had Johnny Depp’s
depravedly fey pirate to swishbuckle us through the silly
parts, and the first sequel, Dead Man’s Chest, which
had interludes of comedic balderdash, At World’s End
is a seemingly endless parade of barely integrated high dudgeon
and bloated effects sequences peppered with bizarrely arresting
visuals (the most impressive being a typhoon that sucks down
two galleons).
After an interminable intrigue in Singapore, Capt. Jack is
found losing his mind on Davy Jones Locker, a whitewashed
desert island over the edge of the world. It’s indicative
of the film’s inspiration level that the sea monster that
was his undoing turns up later as rotting flotsam. In a hallucinatory
state that annoyingly persists throughout the movie, Jack
sees, and converses with, multiple mirage images of himself.
It’s as if Verbinski was so bored with the project that he
decided to dabble in art-house cinematography. Watch for the
direct rip-off of an eerie scene from Lord of the Rings;
it’s the best thing in World’s End.
Depp seems stymied by Jack’s lack of dramatic trajectory—he’s
mostly a pawn playing second fiddle to Elizabeth Swann (Keira
Knightley) and Capt. Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush), and his fey
flourishes come off as a tired imitation of his earlier bravura.
But the most boring character is Elizabeth. Transformed from
a young lady of adventurous leisure to a sword-wielding damsel
in command, Elizabeth is now a stock character from Knightley’s
limited repertoire, indistinguishable (except by her sumptuous
costumes) from other aggressive Knightley heroines (King
Arthur, Domino, Pride & Prejudice).
At one point, Elizabeth is abducted, and bizarrely wooed,
by the pirate king of Singapore (Chow Yun-Fat). It’s a single
moment of sizzle among the enervated relationships she has
with Jack, with her new ally, Barbossa (undead but relatively
lively), and her beleaguered sweetheart, Will Turner (Orlando
Bloom), who has become as tiresomely duplicitous as everyone
else. After Jack is rescued, the plot consists of one betrayal
after another, padded out with random bits of pirate lore,
high-seas mythology, and international marketing (pirates
and their crews from around the world are given face time
for no other reason, it seems, than to increase the film’s
global-market accessibility).
Keith Richards’ anticipated appearance as Jack’s father is
too little too late, and his older, craggier, and over-baked
version of Jack has about as much impact as a lead sinker
dropped into a mud puddle.
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