Cinema review
Directed by Gore Verbinski
Starring Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Bill Nighy
Release date 25 May 2007

Will Turner, Elizabeth Swann and Barbossa set out to rescue Jack Sparrow from Davy Jones’s locker. The scene is set for a final battle between an uneasy pirate alliance and Lord Beckett…

The original Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl was the perfect popcorn blockbuster, an expert combination of comic caricature and rollicking big-budget action. Somehow this surprise smash led to the bloated, self-indulgent hulk that was last year’s Dead Man’s Chest. Yes, there were still laughs and yes, there were a handful of dizzying set pieces. But it was foolishly allowed to stretch over a patience-sapping 143 minutes – far too long for anyone to spend in the cartoonish company of pirates.

At World’s End, part three in Disney’s franchise, contains fewer laughs and fewer dizzying set pieces, and is stretched to a numbing 167 minutes. Seriously –167 minutes? Even Cutthroat Island had the decency to be over and done with in less than two hours!

As you’d hope from the $200 million budget, At World’s End is at least spectacular. The flawless production design and ILM’s special effects are even more eye-popping than ever, with the seamless blend of CGI and prosthetics helping to create some of the most realistic monster effects ever put on screen. The muddy visuals and trembling cameras occasionally make the movie look like the Black Hawk Down of the high seas, a technique at its most awe-inspiring in the prolonged showdown on the cusp of a whirlpool.

Yet Verbinski’s film is a hollow experience. It’s nearly three hours of noisy spectacle, and even spectacle can become tiresome if it lacks a human dimension. There is a plot amidst all the mayhem – probably. But it’s difficult to decipher what it actually is. The movie zips from location to location, layering double-cross upon double-cross, until your brain throbs from trying to keep up. If you can’t recall last year’s installment in minute detail, you’re doomed before you even enter the cinema.

As Jack Sparrow, Johnny Depp offers more of the same: more rum swilling, more womanising and more cowardly acts of self-preservation. And, though that joke isn’t quite as funny any more, at least Depp still flounders about as if he’s appearing in the light-hearted, knockabout that At World’s End should have been, and provides a counter to the distressingly pleasant Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley. Keith Richards’s much-hyped cameo as Sparrow Senior provides some brief amusement, though he has the gall to sound rather different to Depp’s impersonation of him.

No one expected At World’s End to be a low-key little indie picture. But sometimes less can be more, even in a huge action movie like this. The constant onslaught of explosions, exposition and more explosions becomes a slightly wearing experience after a while. But, of course, such criticism is rather redundant. It wasn’t enough stop Dead Man’s Chest becoming the third highest-grossing movie ever made and At World’s End is likely to follow suit, suggesting that Disney will be the one to have the last 'Yo ho ho'. Matt McAllister

VERDICT: 5/10
A spectacular but empty experience.