Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. Directed by Gore Verbinski (Who?). Starring Johnny Depp, Keira Knightly, Orlando Bloom, Bill Nighy (pronounced “Nghhhggrff,” pretty sure) …annnnnnnnnd you’ll be happy to know, all (keep that all in mind) the former cast from Pirates: The Black Pearl, namely Commodore Foppington (or something… the British twit who wants to marry Elizabethh Swann); the two pirate ginks, the pudgy balding one with the bad teeth and the skinny balding one with the glass eye (and the bad teeth); Jack Sparrow’s sorta good, sorta bad first mate, Arrrrrgh (or something); Elizabethh’s British fop father, the Governor (Jonathan Pryce, a fops’ fop); et al. (Latin for “Don’t be surprised if there’s a surprise!)…
When I feed the First Position of Attention from FM 22-5 into an on-line translator for rendering into French, the computer can’t figure out which sense of the word “chest” my definition has in mind where it reads “…stomach in; chest out…” So, it does what computers do: chooses the wrong one (much as your peanie butter toast lands peanie butter side down in the cat litter if you drop it). Anyhow: computer tells me to throw out my footlocker instead of my thorax. Sure enough, the “chest” at stake here (and its contents) could be the one or t’other: the sternum of lovelorn Davy Jones or his trunk (to be found full fathom five beneath the wave), a teehee that runs the whole length (and awhisker tooooooooooo much length at that) of this watchable (and yuckable) film. Doesn’t measure up to the first, though much of the pleasure in The Black Pearl sprang from delight in discovering it not so bad as previous pirate flicks, embarrassingly for instance the one with Geena Davis on account of if you can take Geena Davis and squeeze her into leather pants annnnnnnd get her soaky wet to boot (oh, yeah… speaking of “boot,” she wears boots, too… up to here!) and still fetch up a clinker, might just be the genre (French for: “boots up to here”).
Still, this flick is full of quirky and don’t-take-it-too-serious characters, including Orlando Bloom’s too-serious blacksmith who takes it too serious except Bloom seems to have learnt not to take it too serious taking it too serious and so delivers a pretty good knight a-rant (so to speak). And speaking of knights, Keira Knightly reprises (a lot like “does it one more time,” except what high cheekbones, pouty lips, tight jeans—and they actually dress her up in breeches (a lot like trousers only not) putatively disguised as a tar, yeah, like a balding guy with bad teeth who’s been at sea for six months on a hunnert-foot-long pirate ship couldn’t spot a pair of cheekbones like that from all the way athwart a reefed main mizzen to’gallant spanker—but, you know, spunky Dresden china dolls do. Depp minces once more Jack Sparrow still doing that odd lowbrow British accent (Errol Flynn was always a pirate right off Saville Row) and proffering those weird bird-like gestures; in one scene, we watch him beat feet chased by a tribe of cannibals, and let’s pray it’s his Method ™ acting, his absorption into the role that leaves him running like a girlie. Furthermore, the ambience (French for “XVIIth Century—I guess—squalor”) is still artful and exotic and gloriously piratic…with the exception that once again a sequel (Ghost Busters II; Men in Black II) has pinned its hopes not on sustained cleverness of dialogue or consistent quirkitude of character but on special effects: the bad guy this time, Davy Jones, winds up swaddled in a worm-knot of latex tentacles—unbelievably, the guy who plays him, Nighy, has drawn rave reviews for managing to express himself through all that moulage (French for “latex tentacles”)—and they’ve larded the action with way too many blow-ups and ka-booms so that it’s too long and too short at once (too much fluff; not enough stuff).
This time out, Elizabethh and her fie-ancy Will (They haven’t married! Cooling of ardor? Second thoughts on the class differential? Intrusion of a third party?) find themselves arrested by new-on-the-scene fop Lord Beckett (along with Elizabethh’s father, the Governor: “Of course I’m the Governor. D’you think I wear this wig for nothing?”) on account of they facilitated the escape of Jack Sparrow. Beckett intends, howsomever, not to incarcerate them but extort from Will a promise to chase down Jack and through him retrieve the contents of Davy Jones’ “chest” (vid. sup. …Latin for “Like I told you before”). And we’re off. Meanwhile, Jack’s ship has run aground on the Island of the Ogga Woggas (or something: looks a whooooole lot like misty isle where they found Kong… hey! we had the set left over…) and his crew has got imprisoned in the Woven Bamboo Sphere of Death (or something). With their release, we set sail (the lot of us: Will; Elizabethh in drag or reverse drag or whatever it’s called when a high cheekbones, pouty lips, tight bloomers fee-male fetches up in a mustache and tight breeches; Jack; the good pirates; Commodore Foppington;Marie flockin’ Curie and the bandito from the Magnificent Seven) for Davy Jones’ lair (and the bad pirates), where a big sea battle and dénouement (like an “ending” only French) will take place and resolve…nothing. Does the haunting Elizabethh fall in the end for the romantic Jack? Does she prefer instead the staid Will? Do the good pirates snag a royal pardon? Do the bad pirates get their comeuppance (or better: splashdownnance)? Do the dead stay dead? Pirates III coming up!
Too long and too effectsy, buuuuuuuut… couple of scenes just terrific after the fashion of Spielberg’s best bits in the Indiana Jones trilogy, where a twiddle gets explored niftily and thoroughly till it’s exhausted (and we are, too) like the long truck pursuit in Temple or the tank capture in Crusade: watch in particular the protracted yoyo rescue of Jack’s crew from the Woven Bamboo Sphere of Death and the swordfight while lumberjacking on top of the rolling paddlewheel. Sadly, the novel characters and the fabulous moments of art in Chest, proof the guy who did this has the gift, disincline us to forgive that he hasn’t plied that gift with more consistency.