I've always enjoyed watching Johnny Depp hamming it up as Captain Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, and in this final part in the trilogy, he was no exception. Unfortunately, he was the only really good thing about the film which is, in my opinion, a convoluted, confusing and disappointing mess.Sure, we have the amusing Singapore reference in the first half hour, with Chow Yun Fatt as a rather disgusting-looking (and sadly one-dimensional) Captain Sao Feng; Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom reprise their roles as the star-crossed lovers Elisabeth and Will respectively and I must admit, their characters have been fleshed out considerably than when we last saw them in the second installment of the trilogy.
However, the villains in this film, if there were meant to be any at all, were rather unmenacing; I know that a positive ending for the good guys would be inevitable but a good film always draws cinema-goers into the illusion that a negative outcome might be possible. In this case though, there was never a point in the show when I ever doubted that Captain Jack Sparrow and his merry company would win and live happily ever after in the end. But what ticked me off the most was the superbly draggy first half of the film, with barely intelligible plot twists and pointless meanderings that would test the patience of all but the most ardent fans of the Pirates franchise; the film is definitely at least half-an-hour too long!
Thank god then for the faster-paced last half-hour or so when things kicked up into high gear and the special effects come in full force. Still, for a film which had been claimed as having the second highest box-office weekend opening ever at the time of its release in the US (right behind Spiderman 3), I was expecting something a tad more entertaining, and engaging. If it weren't for Depp's hilarious (though this time around, his character seem to have mellowed down somewhat) turn as Captain Jack, Pirates 3 would have been an epic disaster.
my rating: 3/5 stars!!!
