Mindless and Terrible: Pirates of the Caribbean 3

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
Directed by Gore Verbinski
Released May 25, 2007

I loved the first "Pirates of the Caribbean." I predicted Johnny Depp would receive an Oscar nomination from the beginning, and thought he wholeheartedly deserved a win. I was decidedly disappointed with the second film, which I thought focused too much on unnecessary and overdone slapstick comedy and the plot was sort of dumb. Depp's performance seemed tired and hardly original. The third film only expands upon my negative feelings about the second film.

Some who I have talked to about my hatred of "Pirates 3" remind me that it is supposed to be merely a kids' entertainment film. If that is the intention, it is an awfully creepy one (the first scene contains numerous hangings, for starters). The main problem is the absolutely inane construction of the interactions between characters, which can hardly even be described as a plot. It is hard to fully describe the extent of its convoluted nature without revealing too much, but even as popcorn entertainment it just makes no sense at all.

Depp's performance is again fairly effortless, all the more unfortunate because of his brilliant work in the first film. The rest of the actors' performances are not worth a mention, although all of them were great in the first film, and similar to Depp, their performances have decreased majorly in quality. At one point, one of the characters sits in the brig and for a moment, it looks like she is texting someone because she is so bored. In another scene, Keith Richards actually sits down and just starts playing a guitar because he has nothing better to do.

The film clocks at a torturous 2 hours and 45 minutes, which feels are the more long because the action onscreen is generally unexciting. The token amazing music from the first film is absent until nearly 2 hours and 15 minutes in, and the score up to that point feels lacking. A sweeping zoom-in to a view of the ocean feels like a rip-off of a "Bad Boys" or "Miami Vice"-style cinematography. Overall, the film tries to capture the brilliance of the first film by attempting to be clever but fails miserably and comes off as irritating and mind-numbing.

F