Dirt... this is a jar of dirt

Like $55m worth of people, I went to see Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest last night. The trailers beforehand began unimpressively with Top Gun but less gay, Tony Scott by (recent) numbers, but then picked up considerably. We got a first look at 'Night at the Museum' (co-starring Ricky Gervais!) and then another for a live-action version of Pixar's Cars, with at least two laugh-out-loud moments. "I can't control my heart rate, I got a cougar on me!" Oh, and there was this, which two people applauded. Including me.

OK... Pirates. It's very action packed. Not much cohesive storyline. Unsurprisingly, not nearly as good as the first one. Captain J isn't as awesome or hilarious this time around, maybe because there isn't the novelty that he had last time. The action is exhausting and spectacular. There are cannibals who dance, a heart in a box, and Stellan Skarsgård has a starfish on his face. This man is terrific in it.



The ending is pretty interesting. In case you haven't seen it, I'll put my comments in white. So if you want to read them, just highlight the text. Fair?

It really has bad middle-film-of-trilogy syndrome. I was unsatisfied at the end, because absolutely nothing had resolution. This one was building and building but then just sort of stopped. Jack's in the belly of the Kraken, the East India Company has Davy Jones' heart, Davy Jones is still, presumably, at large, and best (and most inexplicably) of all, Barbossa is back! I didn't have this many questions at the end of 'Back to the Future 2', you know. I thought of the Harry Potter series - although as a series, they're building to an overall conclusion, at least each individual one has its own story and satisfying climax, whereas from this there's little story and just a bizarre set of cliffhangers. It's a kid's film at heart so I don't want to pick holes in the story, that'd be really pointless (but how did Will get the key from Davy so easily? etc.) but the (absence of an) ending kinda soured the film for me.

Can't wait for Part 3, though.