Those odd bits out work.

By: amatorian
Date: Monday, May 28, 2007

For this review you will see two sides of me.  The goatee evil version from a mirror universe and the normally calm and complacent version.  Why?  Because I have been drinking and what better way to speed off a review of a film about pirates, dark secrets, high adventure and RUM!!  No I wasn't drinking before, when I actually viewed the film.  Afterwards though, there was much drinking to be had upon my blimey place at my house...yet, I am saddened by no wenches!!

Bring me my wenches!!

Evil – To those that believe that the first film was better than the last two.  Eat it!  The first was a deranged and diseased fascination of Disney, with characters that perpetrated what that studio has been handing out for decades.  Perhaps an Academy Award should be offered to a man who (almost) single handedly saved a movie, still it does not make up for the rest.  You wanna hear what was good with Curse of the Black Pearl?  Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush...and thats it.  The effects were good, the action was good but they made it shine.  Between Bloom's horse faced acting, Knightley's phoning it in, the comedy styling of Abbot and Costello on shrooms left over from Honey We Shrunk Ourselves and the tedious villain that amounted to nothing I was left appalled by the movie.  Merely I found it fun, simple and a good exercise in seeing Johnny Depp do Hunter S. Thompson impressions again. 

Normal – There is a reason why the first film succeeded and that was because it was a rarity in family styling.  It attempted to bridge the gap lacking in modern media from children to parents.  Perhaps so many of you find the second two films appalling because this gap is no longer there, that this gap is prevalent more to the nature of the twelve year old in all of us.  Not the child, not the little kid wanting more, but the now-founded pubescent yearning for love, happiness and a lot of monster killing!!  Despite all the money the first made it was still lackluster to me and I refused to see it a second time, nor see it's sequel on opening night (which I found far superior).

Both – And why?  Why is the second film a better movie for me, perhaps not you, but me.  Because in it we see actors become better, a full story come to pass and the assumption that the audience can keep up.  Action that's over the top is not new and classics of the Pirate genre that make your groin whistle the yo-ho-ho's only didn't attempt this because they lacked the ability.  Dead Man's Chest and At World's End are those movies, dripping with the still fermenting placenta from the womb they came from.

Evil – This movie isn't confusing, and I have read it so much that it is.  Too many subplots, too many stories...what the hell is wrong with you?  It's as if you don't have the brain capabilities to keep up with a fictional tale.  This isn't tough, this isn't stressful, this isn't reality!!  Too many reviews I have heard people say this was chock full of too much to handle all done to a point where one segues into another without compromise.  I HATED SPIDEY 3!!  AND I AM A COMIC GEEK!!  I was born with a comic issue of the Incredible Hulk in hand.  I tell you, there is nothing wrong with throwing in the kitchen sink, but there is something wrong with doing it poorly and this movie didn't.  To me, having watched the movie, those that can't keep up, those that have no discourse for HIGH adventure on the open seas in this accord are either not attempting or do not wish to even be entertained.

Normal – I apologize for him, he's a tad bit weak in the knees and falls too hard for his mistresses.  If there is anything wrong with this film it's that old saying of too much of a good thing.  Here we have FAR too much of a good thing.  Does that make it bad?  No.  Yet, we find ourselves yearning for more. Three, four or five hour movies matter not to me (one of my favorite movies is Branaugh's four hour long Hamlet), time is not the issue.  The issue is stroking at the ego of pirate films of all time.  Rent the classics, watch Errol Flynn do those wonderful things he does and dare tell me that if he were here today that this is not the film he would want to be in.  That he would want to be a part of.

Both – When all is said and done perhaps the critics lose the battle to this film.  For me, this is that part of me that none of us talk about.  At World's End, as was Dead Man's Chest, is a part of our teens, our early teens.  This is what PG-13 was made for.  Those movies that satiate the hope, the desire for non-stop action and adventure.  For silly love and even sillier villains.  For those things that we are on the copse of realizing will never exist.  This is what so many movies dream of being truly described as.

A labor of love.  Not the filmmakers love, but our love of being a thirteen year old child.  For me, being Jack Sparrow or Barbosa, swinging around and attempting to steal the other guys love.  For other guys being Bloom, constantly visioning nothing more than the truth to everything.  To girls, being empowered by being able to deal it out as well as and sometimes even better than the guys.  Here are magical heroes, anti-heroes and just plain dirty thieves told to us the way Disney used to.

With gusto, with crass, with desire, with belief and with joy....and lots of RUM!!

Amatorius

(P.S.  All insults from the reviewer are in good spirits of drunk on Rum.  If you have a complaint just think to yourself that there is a decent chance you have a larger penis than him and possibly you will find satiation)

Click here to read the staff review by Mania.