There's a gesture I make in films that my wife knows well. It starts out with me slouching in my seat. As I get progressively aggravated with the movie, I sink lower and lower. And then finally, if the film really aggravates me, I drop my head on my wife's shoulder. The last time I did this was during the third Batman movie.
I thought a child being hung was a pretty disturbing tone way to start the movie, but then, he's a pirate and he's beginning "the song." Apparently the song is somehow significant to pirate lore. What the mournful song has to do with anything, I have no idea. It's not a big deal though, because World's End is so stuffed with ideas that the weird song concept is quickly dropped.
We then careen to a scene in an Asian bathhouse, where our heroes attempt to negotiate with Captain Sao Feng (Chow Yun-Fat). They need a boat, you see, to rescue Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) from Davey Jones' Locker, the equivalent of pirate hell.
This is a bit odd, since one character has already been brought back from the dead: the dread pirate Barbossa (played by the inimitable Geoffrey Rush). Why is Barbossa easy to return through the voodoo magic of Tia Dalma (Naomie Harris) and not Jack? 'Cause "Jack's spirit was taken, you just died," she explains.
I guess being eaten by a kraken will do that to you. Speaking of the archvillain of the second movie, the poor thing is found dead in the middle of World's End, washed upon a beach. Unfortunately Verbinski doesn't show that merciless discipline to the rest of his characters.
If there's one overarching flaw in World's End, it's that there are too many characters. It's like watching an entire season of Lost over the span of two hours. There are so many plot points, so many entertaining leads, so many good (and not so good) actors, that the film is stuffed to the brim until it all becomes a soupy mess. Villains from the first movie has become good guys, good guys from the second movie have become bad guys, bad guys change allegiances, good guys betray each other, and after awhile you give up and wait for the big battles to arrive.
Only they don't. The huge armada battle between the English navy and a fleet of pirate ships never really happens. Instead, we get the equivalent of naval grandstanding, with single ships battling it out over a whirlpool while the others look on (the movie equivalent of ninjas hopping around in the background while they are dispatched one at a time by the hero). It struck me that World's End long decided that "normal" ship-to-ship battles are boring, and thus need to be utterly ridiculous to be entertaining.
And they are entertaining, to a point. There's just too much to do and too many plots to follow. Jack Sparrow is superfluous, which is a crying shame. His most entertaining moments are when he's having a nervous breakdown, talking to good and bad (or, depending on your perspective, bad and bad) versions of himself. Or shouting at a crew populated by his doppelgangers. Or arguing with a skeletal version of himself that "loses its brain." No, really.
Will Wil Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) ever get together? There were some misunderstandings in the second film that could arguably drive a wedge between them, but that wedge was named Jack. With him out of the picture, it takes much too long for the two to reconcile their differences. Fortunately, their reconciliation (a wedding performed by Barbosa in the middle of a shipside battle) is probably the best moment in the film.
Speaking of Barbosa, there's not just too many plots, there's too many captains. The Brethren Council, a council of nine pirates who each possess a Piece of Eight (Why not eight?) to free the sea goddess Calypso seems to have been made up on the spot. In about two minutes, Swann ascends to Pirate King, thus nullifying the whole purpose of the Council. At some point, Keith Richards shows up as a really scary pirate that tells everyone what to do. These pirates seem to have more ranks and nobility than the English!
By the time Tia turns into Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, I leaned my head on my wife's shoulder.
World's End doesn't give us happy endings. It doesn't wrap up Jack's story. And it shamelessly dangles yet another sequel to a series that's not sure what it wants to be when it grows up. Verbinski obviously is having fun at our expense, as evidenced by the audio playing from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, playing over Jacks' arrival to Davey Jones' Locker.
World's End is a wild ride. But I'd rather pay to see it at Disneyland than in the theater.
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