Click Here For Our Interview with Johnny Depp

Click Here For Our Interview with Orlando Bloom

Click Here For Our Interview with Naomi Harris

Click Here For Our Interview with Gore Verbinski

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

It's hard to imagine a more universally satisfying blockbuster being released this summer. While I personally enjoyed Cars and Superman Returns more, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is likely to be less divisive amongst audiences. Fans of the original will get exactly what they are expecting in a sequel. Newcomers to the series shouldn't have much difficulty settling in either. Despite there being a myriad of characters returning from the first film, their backgrounds aren't really that important. For the most part, the characters exist just like their amusement park progenitors, serving as spectacle rather than personalities. I don't mean to suggest that Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) is comparable to a pre-programmed audio-animatronic but does he really have personality or does he have trademark mannerisms?

When Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl concluded, our young heroes Will (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth (Keira Knightly) risked their social status to save the conniving but convivial Captain Jack Sparrow from the gallows. As Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest opens, Will and Elizabeth are set to be wed but their allegiance to Jack has disrupted their hopes for matrimonial bliss.

Lord Cutler Beckett (Tom Hollander) is on the scene, spewing grandiloquent dialogue with a British accent and flashing around arrest warrants for Will and Elizabeth. He makes a bargain with Will: retrieve Jack Sparrow's compass and the warrants will be forgotten. Will embarks on a quest to track down Jack and regain his freedom. Eventually he finds the wayward pirate and the crew of the Black Pearl held captive on a foreign island by the natives. The makeshift team must devise a plan of escape only to run into the ghost of Davy Jones (Bill Nighy) and his crew of amphibian-human hybrids who have come to collect on a vital debt from Jack. Meanwhile, Elizabeth disguises herself as a sailor and stows away on a ship, aligning her own bid for freedom.

The plot is rather episodic, as it should be, since the primary purpose of the events unfolding is to reunite the characters, which are much more fun to talk about anyway. Will is the earnest, unimposing, straight man – the Luke Skywalker of the series. Orlando Bloom gives a stoic performance, much more at home as a swashbuckler than as a contemporary advertising executive in last year's Elizabethtown. Keira Knightly has little to do other than look excessively tanned until some interesting developments late in the film. Love Actually's Billy Nighy takes on the role of the film's main villain, the legendary Davy Jones (the pirate of

course, not the lead singer of The Monkeys). He does a good job slithering around as the slimy, waterlogged captain but his performance is missing a little of the relish that Geoffrey Rush applied to the first film. Maybe the problem is he isn't given a line as simultaneously hammy and chilling as Rush's "You best start believing in ghost stories, Miss Turner. You're in one!"

Also on hand are the immortal goofballs from the first film, Pintel (Lee Arenberg) and Ragetti (Mackenzie Crook), delivering consistent comic relief. Fans of Seinfeld and the British The Office will be glad to see Mike Moffit and Gareth back in Pirate gear, although they're no longer immortal seeing as the curse was lifted in the first film. Crook is skilled at both physical and verbal comedy and Arenberg's reprisal of "Hello poppet" is priceless.

Then of course there's the inimitable Johnny Depp, effortlessly slipping back into his Oscar-nominated role as the caddish dandy, Jack Sparrow. Although, it might be a little too effortless for him. The role lacks some of the freshness and intrigue it had during the first go-around. At times I felt he was veering dangerously close to merely going through the motions rather than radiating energy off of the screen as he had previously done with the role. Much like Elizabeth's character, Sparrow receives some much needed depth toward the film's conclusion, reinstating the vitality of his performance.

So, that means the biggest surprise of Dead Man's Chest is that Depp's performance isn't the best in the film. That honor goes to Stellan SkarsgÃ¥rd (Good Will Hunting, Breaking the Waves) as Will's father, "Bootstrap" Bill Turner, one of the indebted shipmates of Davey Jones. Despite being duded out in pirate garb and hidden behind ungainly make-up that includes a starfish permanently attached to the right side of his face, Skarsgaard manages to give a morosely sincere performance. His first visit to Jack in the form of an apparition carries the same tormented impotence as Banquo's ghost in Macbeth. While Depp is still the flashy showboat that garners the most attention (deservedly), Skarsgaard is the beating heart of the film. And yes that is supremely ironic seeing he is a ghost after all.

The subject of ghosts accentuates what I believe is the film's strongest thematic attribute: its morbidity. Most notable is how deftly the series juggles adventure and humor but less attention is paid to how downright spooky the films are. Director Gore Verbinski knows how to make a film scary (as demonstrated with The Ring) and he also knows when to keep that talent restrained. Pirates is after all a Disney film. But it's also PG-13 and Verbinski takes advantage of this by incorporating a few "boo" scares and some creepy imagery. Jones' crew is a marvelously icky group of guys and the wooden creature

that literally comes out of the woodwork of the ship's hull to tell Sparrow about the supernatural chest is a visual treat.

The production scale of the film is enormous and the money has clearly been well spent. The costumes are extravagant, the locations are picturesque, the make-up is flawless and the special effects are not overly flashy. There are maybe one or two shots in which the Kraken (a mythological, giant octopus that I recall from the days of "Monster in My Pocket" figurines) looks a little too obviously computer-rendered but for the most part resembles a frighteningly realistic creature straight out of Jules Verne's imagination. Water is a notoriously difficult element to shoot on and given the subject material, water-based scenes are numerous. They may be shooting in a water tank on the Studio lot but the beautifully blue water and the sparsely clouded sky look very convincing.

As is a rule with all back-to-back sequel productions, the film ends on a delightfully tantalizing cliffhanger. At first I was unsure how I felt about this. It seemed like the films have enough of a built-in audience that there was no need for gimmicky ploys. I also liked the idea of serialized characters but self-contained adventures. That being said, it does elevate the events to a grander scale of importance and more importantly, what an exhilarating final shot!

Movie Grade: B+

Synopsis:

When Captain Jack Sparrow (Depp) finds out he owes a blood debt to ghostly Davey Jones (of locker fame), he desperately searches for a way to pay it off, or else face eternal damnation in the afternoon. And he’s not above interrupting the wedding plans of Will Turner (Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Knightley) to do it.