Pirates of the Caribbean 2

On Saturday, Kate and I went to see Johnny Depp swish his way through a second movie as Captain Jack Sparrow, with assistance from Kiera Knightly, Orlando Bloom, and a lot of other wooden props. She’s posted a review with spoilers, and I’ll post some spoilers below the fold, but my one-word, spoiler-free review is here:

Excessive.

To expand, the movie was not just too long, it was too much. Individual pieces of it were a good deal of fun, but there were too many pieces, and the whole was less than the sum of the parts. More details (with massive movie-destroying SPOILERS) below the fold.

To begin with, the cannibal sequence was both pointless and insulting. It was like they were working off a checklist of unpleasant racial steroetypes in film, to make sure they didn’t miss anything. And then, on top of that, it didn’t go anywhere– there was some nice stunt work, but nothing that advanced the main plot.

Which would’ve been forgivable, save for the fact that they ended the movie with not one, not two, but three lengthy battles with the kraken. Two would’ve been ok, and made a certain amount of sense, but the third was just silly. It was almost as if they had money left over in the CGI budget, and needed to spend it out.

Lose one of the kraken scenes, and tone down the racial steroetyping a bit, and the cannibal thing would’ve been almost acceptable. Lose the cannibal sequence entirely, and the third kraken fight wouldn’t’ve been quite as annoying. Put them all together, though, and it was a bit tough to take.

And that excess runs through every aspect of the movie. The three-way sword fight between Will, Jack, and Norrington is good, but it goes on much too long (the rolling wheel sequence in particular). The flogging scene is drawn out past reasonable length, and the dice game, and there’s generally a bit too much drippy squalor on the Flying Dutchman.

There’s even too much Jack Sparrow– Depp’s gay pirate routine was hilarious in the first movie because it was unexpected. It’s much less effective here, because the writers and director haven’t missed an opportunity to show him mincing about in an exaggerated manner.

Which is not to say that it was an awful experience, or anything– some of the individual scenes are a lot of fun (“Undead monkey!”), and the set-pieces by themselves are clever and well done. It’s just taken as a whole that there’s a problem.

I’ll still see the third in the theater, because it’s a Summer Blockbuster sort of movie, and those deserve the big screen, but this wasn’t as much fun as the original.