Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest at IMDb.com
I have to admit that I wasn’t expecting much when I went to see DMC, I’d heard a lot of mixed reviews and the general opinion is that it’s not as good as the first one. Thats an opinion which I echo wholeheartedly, The Curse of the Black Pearl was a masterful piece filled with tense action, wonderful comic relief from Johnny Depp and an excellent plot. They even did a really good job of the CGI on the Black Pearls undead crew.
The same cannot be said of DMC. The action is farcical at best, with very little tension. There’s nothing about the action sequences that had me on the edge of my seat, and whilst some of the swordplay is quite fun, it’s nowhere near as good as in CorBP. There is one particular sequence which will stick in my memory for a while purely because of how ridiculous it was, three of the main characters end up fighting on a water wheel which is rolling through a jungle, they fight on top, inside and around the edge of the wheel for a very long time. The fight is vaguely interesting, but it drags on far too long and is far too silly to be exciting.
As for Johnny Depp, the star of the show in CotBP, well he really wasn’t. He had his wonderful drunken swagger throughout, and played his character wonderfully well as he did before, however the script was poor at best. There were very few throwaway lines for the viewer to giggle at, nothing quotable at any point in the movie, and the humour element which was the saving grace of CotBP just wasn’t there. As I mentioned before, the fight scenes were somewhat silly, but where the script should have been amusing it was cringe worthy, and where it should have been silly it was just plain poor.
There were of course some good points as well, the best of which by far was Bill Nighy’s portrayal of Davy Jones. His character was fully animated, so he only provided the voice, but it was put together extremely well and was by far the best CGI character I’ve seen in a movie with real actors. On top of that the Kraken made an excellent monster, which (unlike the crew of Davy Jones ship) was genuinely frightening.
All in all, it was enjoyable to watch, but had very little substance to it, and none of the flare of the first. Of course, it was written as the second part of a trilogy, and as such it ends half way through the story. I am quite looking forward to seeing the third installment purely to see where they take the plot, and who else they will introduce in the third film. There are a lot of threads beyond the main plot which are hinted at or started in DMC, but not fully explained, and I am intrigued as to where they will go.
So is it worth watching? In my opinion no, not on it’s own. However if the third installment is anywhere near as good as the first, Dead Man’s Chest will work well as part of a trilogy.
