Sam reviews…
Jul.24, 2006, filed under Miscellany
Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man’s Chest
I shan’t bother with any spoiler warnings. I’m not going to reveal the oh-so-unpredictable twist in the end or anything like that because, frankly, I can’t be arsed. The film isn’t worth spoiling. You need to wrest any crumb of enjoyment from it that you can.
Although it turns out that Munky was correct in his assessment that I would not enjoy the film, it was not the Disneyness of it that was the problem. It was, to put it succinctly: over-long, over-indulgent, overly-visual and short on piracy.
Depp is still the best thing about these films, but he was muzzled in this one. Many people have said that his performance was even more hyperactive and extreme than in the last one — Fear And Loathing‘s Hunter S Thompson with a hat and a square-rigger. To this I say: bollocks. There was a total inadequacy of badinage, as Frood so rightly observed. The film clung to its quite sumptuously fantastic special effects (even I thought the tentacles were good), expecting them to deliver the coup de grace, when what matters in a pirate film is the cheesing piracy.
I don’t care how big the giant bleedin’ squid is, even though only the corvidae outstrip cephalopods in terms of my obsessive geekery. I want to see Jack drunk on rum, plenty of double and triple bluffing, much buckling of swash and, well, pirates!
I was clock watching from about an hour and a half, knowing how long it was and wishing I’d brought some concealed-carry alcohol to relieve the tedium.
Bill Nighy did a great job. He really did. Apparently he based his character on Chewin the Fat. This explains a great deal. Johnny Depp looked to be sleepwalking through a role that had been choke-chained and hobbled by a studio who wanted everyone else to get more of a role — or maybe he was so disappointed by Keith Richard’s non-appearance that he just gave up.
I don’t even want to discuss the rest of the cast. It’s too boring. Although the voodoo woman was quite good — could have used smoking gunpowder in her hair, mind.
We’ll probably go and see the next one. You never know. It might be a film that does not exist moment.
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Singularity
~something that is singular as (a) a separate unit, or (b) unusual or distinctive manner or behavior; PECULIARITY;
~the quality or state of being singular;
~a point at which the derivative of a given function of a complex variable does not exist but every neighborhood of which contains points for which the derivative exists;
~a point or region of infinite mass density at which space and time are infinitely distorted by gravitational forces and which is held to be the final state of matter falling into a black hole. Sight
