Yaaarrrrrr!

Anne and I seem to develop traditions with movies. During the run of Lord of the Rings movies, we would go to see the current one during Christmas with at least part of Anne's family. It was a lot of fun, but left us with a bit of a hollow feeling when they were all done. Then, we went and saw the second Pirates of the Carribean movie with some friends of ours. At that point, Anne was expecting Squeaker. This time around, they were expecting. If they make another one, we're going to have to flip for who's going to be expecting at that time. Vegas currently has odds saying that it'll probably be me.

Anyway, we were all a bit disappointed with the second film. It seemed to me to be a series of events put in place to be able to get from one gigantic set-piece to another. There was a lack of the solid and coherent story that made us care about any of the characters that we fell in love with in the first film. A good summation of the situation was done by the brilliant people at Ask a Ninja. Check out their review of the second film.

I'm a completist. If I have one album of a group that I really like, I try to collect them all. If I have one graphic novel of a series, I try to get them all. If I watch one movie, I try to see them all. Such was the case with The Matrix, even though I saw that the series was very quickly going downhill. To a certain extent, when you were disappointed with the second movie in a series, it helps the third movie by lowering expectations. You aren't necessarily expecting to watch a fantastic movie, so there's no let-down. This helped Pirates of the Carribean: At World's End.

All of the major characters are back: Jack Sparrow (excuse me, Captain Jack Sparrow), Elizabeth Swann, Will Turner, and their crew. Elizabeth and Will are charged with the task of retrieving Jack Sparrow from Davy Jones's locker. I was disappointed that they didn't have a Monkey's song playing when they were there, but such is life. They are opposed by Lord Bennet and Davey Jones himself, who has really let himself go since the sixties. OK, I'm done with the same name jokes.

Ultimately, I think that the best thing I can say about the third pirates movie is that it's significantly better than the second film. For one thing, the third move has an actual plot, which was a nice change of pace. It's also significantly darker than either of the first two films and has the gigantic, epic battle that's becoming standard in these sorts of movies. However, it still doesn't nearly approach the classic (yes, I said "classic") that the original film was. To a certain extent, they should have just left the first move to stand on its own without creating sequels. I think we all would have been happier for it.

Final Verdict: two-and-a-half large, floppy hats out of five.