Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest - IMDb

Disney's return to the extremely successful franchise of 'Pirates' will make many people very rich, since everybody and their mother saw this movie opening weekend (setting many new box office records, pulling $132 million over 3 days). But that's fairly obvious and I knew that was going to happen from the moment the sequel was announced, because, again, everybody and their mother saw and liked the original. I have to admit, while I liked the first one, it wasn't particularly my cup of tea, and while enjoyable, I stayed away from most of the hype for part 2.

With all that said, 'Pirates' is an aftermath story of Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) and his quest to find the Dead Man's Chest in order to save himself - which coincidentally Elizabeth Swann (Kiera Knightley) and Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) are after as well, plus numerous other characters that I don't feel like listing.

To start with the bad... apparently Disney didn't hire an editor for this movie, because the 150 minute runtime is ridiciulous. It could've been worse, as there were no parts that I was actually falling asleep, but I could easily pick out a few scenes that needed to be chopped down or eliminated completely, making a more powerful, shorter movie (2 hours would've been perfect). The comedy wasn't as fresh as in the original, and while they tried to tie in a few jokes to the first movie (a few jokes about rum come to mind), usually the punchline was foreseeable much earlier than intended (especially for the new jokes).

Contrariwise, Johnny Depp, yet again, steals the movie with his portrayal of Jack. He had the best lines in the movie and got the most laughs, if only from seeing his way of walking/running like you'd expect a stereotypical gay man to walk/run... but of course, Johnny Depp is dressed like a pirate and priceless in his role, so it's pure comedy.

The concept of filming two movies at once is bittersweet. On one hand, it's nice that there will be definite consistency between the movies because they were filmed together. Also, if you like the franchise, it's good to know you have more ahead; however, it's a total bitch being left on a cliffhanger ending and having to wait another year. I didn't care too much about this cliffhanger though, because like I said before, I'm not a die-hard 'Pirates' fanatic and to me it was just another movie I wanted to see.

The bottom line is that this proves, again, that usually when you stick with the same director for sequels, they turn out better than if you switch - except counting the 'Matrix' movies, because both those sequels sucked - but that's not the point.

Rating: 8/10

Other recent watches that I don't feel like writing reviews for:

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - 7.5/10
Vertigo - 9.5/10
Rear Window - 9/10
Seven Year Itch - 6.5/10
It's a Wonderful Life - 10/10