Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

A comment on my review of the soundtrack reminded me that I hadn't posted my review of the actual movie, which we saw about two weeks ago!

I went into the theater expecting the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie to be the same frothy fun as the first one, only less good. I was pleasantly surprised. While the story was less compelling, POTC 2 followed the pattern of most trilogies, and spent the second act developing characters. The first one had pretty much 2D characters. Barbossa wanted to be alive, Jack wanted his ship, Will wanted Elizabeth, Norrington wanted to hang pirates, and Elizabeth wanted to...survive and marry Will. But in the second one, it is less straight-forward. There is time for the characters to do something other than just wave swords around, and they face difficult decisions, which they do not always judge correctly. Real piracy, not just swashbuckling, is here, with the betrayals and lies that come from its selfish nature. The focus is the characters——how do they react, what will they choose, where will they head——at some loss to the plot. It's fairly simple, with no twists outside character development.

But for all this darkness and simple storyline, POTC 2 is a boatload of fun. There are just as many one-liners as the first one, just as many odd and over-the-top situations, and Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow is just as quirky and scene-stealing as one would hope. This movie makes sure that you know that it knows that it is a sequel; references to the first movie are abundant and very often funny. It also is very self aware that it is an
action movie, throwing in superfluous action scenes that are over-the-top, and therefore enjoyable, if one can realize that it's not meant to be a drama but an action/adventure/comedy summer movie. I have always liked ships and treasure-hunting and swordfights, and especially when they are interposed with some real character development, and this one gave me plenty of it, including a three-way swordfight, something I'd never seen before. If you want the twisting storyline of the first movie, or an action movie that takes itself seriously, you probably will not like POTC 2. But if you want to see more of Jack, and more of the simply fun entertainment that the first one gave, POTC 2 is the perfect summer movie for you!