Arrrh: Pirates Sail into Cinemas Once More: Blog Review Roundup

by Jordan Yerman | May 25, 2007 at 08:49 am

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Update: The latest Pirates flick has sailed off with a jaw-clenching $142.5 million in its opening weekend, according to Variety.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End has arrived, and reviews are beginning to appear, covering the second mega-blockbuster to hit cinemas as the summer movie season gets underway.
Reviews are less than glowing, it seems, though critics are enamoured of Geoffrey Rush's Westcountry-arrrrr'ing Captain Barbossa:

(No spoilers!)

[q
url="http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/movie/9474908/review/14756791/pirates_of_the_caribbean_at_worlds_end?source=movie_reviews_rssfeed"]I
applaud the Oscar nomination Depp received for the first Pirates, but
the third chapter proves that there can indeed be too much of a good
thing. Pirates 3 raises everything from the dead, except inspiration. A
huge set piece in which a pirate ship pulls a Poseidon and turns upside
down must have cost millions and still looks tacky. And until a wow of
a climactic sea battle, the story plods along like a PBS special on the
founding pirate fathers. Happily, Geoffrey Rush (absent from Pirates 2)
encores his "arrghs" as Barbossa and shows how nostril-flaring acting
should be done. This dude can steal scenes from a monkey, and does. [/q]

[q
url="http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=4627074&blogID=268599943"]Pirates
of the Carribean: At World's End is on the whole a terrific combination
of Action, Comedy and Fantasy fused together to form one inescapable
freight train to assault your senses. It truly is summer escapism at
it's best. The film picks up almost where we left off in the last
movie, with our trusty crew of pirates now led by the wonderful
Geoffrey Rush as Captain Barbossa, into Singapore to get the charts to
the land of the dead where Jack Sparrow lies.[/q]

[q
url="http://www.cinemablend.com/reviews/Pirates-of-the-Caribbean-At-World-s-End-2302.html"]We’re
three movies in to the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and I still
have no idea who Will Turner is. He’s never developed a personality.
Whether that’s because no one has bothered to write him one or because
Orlando Bloom has all the acting range of a two-by-four is hard to say.
It’s probably a combination of both. We may not know who Will Turner
is, but nobody seems to care. There are so many big personalities in
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End it hardly matters that the
skinny little pale fellow over in the corner never turned in to an
actual character. Big personalities rule these seven seas, and the
biggest of those personalities is of course Johnny Depp as Captain Jack
Sparrow. But At World’s End proves that while his place in piracy may
be the biggest, it’s not necessarily the most important. Pirates 3 is
better than Pirates 2 for one, very good reason: Forget Captain Jack,
Captain Barbossa is back![/q]

Some movies are too much of a good thing; others are too much of a bad thing. And some, like "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End," are too much of nothing -- very expensive nothing.

[q
url="http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=40847983&blogID=268598779"]Like
Jack Sparrow? In his new movie, you get a whole ship full of him.
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End is the strangest and most
bizarre blockbuster I've seen since Ang Lee's Hulk. It tries to walk a
tightrope – or a plank – between a rousing swashbuckler, a mythic epic,
a special-effects-laden extravaganza, and an art film. It doesn't
really succeed at doing any of them justice, except for the special
effects. The Pirates of the Caribbean movies have always represented a
greater mastery of tone and design than of storytelling, but that's
never really bothered me since these are, after all, pirate adventures
and who wants to kill that buzz? But, unfortunately, the charm is
wearing thin. The new film does manage to keep itself afloat, but it's
also a tiring and convoluted cesspool of unrestrained ideas, (and not
all good ones), that's sometimes only watchable because of the strong
characters floating around in it. Sometimes, quite literally.[/q]

It’s way too
long and massively convoluted and ultimately just plain silly. But
still, ‘‘Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End’’ is a lot of fun a
lot of the time.

The third movie in the freakishly successful ‘‘Pirates’’ franchise
feels substantial and looks impressive and fulfills the hype
surrounding it in a way the other thirds - Spidey and Shrek - haven’t
so far.

Having said that, it is, of course, a giant meandering mess that
leaves you feeling as if you’ve been tossed about on the high seas for
three hours, but theoretically that’s also part of the allure of these
movies.