Pirates Of The Caribbean
Curse Of The Black Pearl Dead Man's Chest At World's End On Stranger Tides
Pirates Of The Caribbean:
Dead Man's Chest -
Overview
Positives
Negatives
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Brief Review
The second Pirates film takes all that made the first brilliant and tries to make it better with bigger action sequences and forced humour. What Dead Man's Chest does do is confuse the audience with several storylines running simultaneously throughout the film. The film is sorely missing a decent villain and Davey Jones is weak in his role. The cliff-hanger ending guarantees a sequel to this disappointing film.
Full Review
Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is the first sequel to the surprisingly good film that proceeded it, Curse Of The Black Pearl. Unfortunately, Dead Man's Chest is a confusing array of pointless storylines that run simultaneously and the inclusion of new villain, Davey Jones, doesn't help matters.
The story revolves around Captain Jack Sparrow and his new quest to recover the heart of Davey Jones to avoid being enslaved on the Flying Dutchman. On top of this, other characters are after the heart and what results is a confusing mess of overlapping plot lines that drag on for too long.
The story is covered up well with a dizzying array of fast action, loud explosions and big sword fights. Although this might be good if done correctly, Dead Man's Chest succeeds in playing these scenes for far too long which eventually results in boredom to creep in. The Cannibal Island scene is an excellent example of this with not only a ridiculous sidelined plot, the action goes on for far too long and the ending of the scene was a welcome relief.
So with so so action that is easily overshadowed by the brilliant Curse Of The Black Pearl, its left up to the characters and special effects to try and pick up the pieces. Unfortunately, neither really deliver to the same scale as the original.
New villain Davey Jones is possibly one of the worst examples of this. His character is nothing more than a laughable mess of tentacles and poor dialogue and its a shame as his presence should have been more fearful. With such an obvious weakness, it would have been nice to see a no-bullshit approach to his character and a more psychopathic approach might have benefited the dreadful character on the long run.
The rest of the returning cast don't really do anything they haven't done before and the lack of originality hurts this sequel. Jack Sparrow is still brilliant but its still the same swashbuckling, humorous (albeit slightly less so here) hero we've all come to love. Elizabeth and Will Turner are still the same overhyped, dull characters they were in the first and so on and so forth.
The special effects though are actually pretty good and are about the only thing that saves this film. Yes they are overdone but the pirate crew onboard the Flying Dutchman are oozing with creative juices and each are more shockingly realized than the one before. This was by far the best example of the special effects in this film with even Davey Jones looking very realistic.
Overall then, Dead Man's Chest is a mess of ideas and confusing storylines that all revolve around finding Davey Jones' heart. The confusing story cripples the dreadful film and Davey Jones himself was a real disappointment as a villain. The acting doesn't really contain anything that hasn't been done already and the only saving grace here is the special effects which are top notch (although a bit overdone). The sequel destroys everything that made the first film so good and disappoints on almost every level.