Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

I may have been a bit too unkind. There were a few other delights besides Johnny Depp’s performance, so I hereby upgrade my rating just a little bit.

I considered renting the first movie before seeing this one, but didn’t get around to it. Mistake. I hadn’t realized how much this one would rely on the back story, so much of what was going on here was a puzzle to me. I’m not good at remembering plots, especially of movies whose main reason for existence is action and special effects. Not that I think I’d have enjoyed this a whole lot more if I did know what was going on … but it might have helped a little.

So all that’s really of interest here is Johnny Depp, and I’m afraid that Jack Sparrow is not nearly as appealing the second time around as he was on first meeting, and the SFX, which are very well done but not exciting. The design of Davy Jones and his crew was quite good, assembled from various sea creatures and seeming to be real as any actual person, and more real than Michael Jackson. Let’s hear it for motion capture suits! Davy himself is impressive, with the head of an octopus … or more like a nonadecipentapus; there were more tentacles than I could count.

It’s also too long. And that’s about it.