Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End **

By Dan Hudak

      Yo-ho, yo-ho the pirate’s life has come to a dreary end with a laboring, incomprehensible 168 minutes of nonsense. In fairness, the first two films in the “Pirates” trilogy were also nonsense, but they were such cheeky delights that it was hard to resist their unabashed playfulness. Too bad “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” doesn’t have the same jovial tone and really isn’t any fun at all.

      Picking up where “Dead Man’s Chest” left off, Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush), Will Turner (Orlando Bloom), his fiancé Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) and Tia Dalma (Naomie Harris) have traveled to Singapore to recruit pirate captain Sao Feng (Chow Yun-Fat) to help rescue Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp). Because Lord Beckett (Tom Hollander) and Davy Jones (Bill Nighy) are fighting their every move, Barbossa wants to release a sea goddess named Calypso to kill Jones and leave Beckett powerless. Before any of this can happen they must first travel to the end of the world and into Jones’ “Locker,” where Jack is being held in a hallucinogenic purgatory.

      Many other things happen as well, including unforeseen love interests, a meeting of the pirate captains of the world and the highly anticipated appearance of Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards as Jack’s father, Captain Teague (you’ll have to wait a good two hours for this one). Depp has said he based his character on Richards, and considering his scant acting experience Richards does quite well. The rest of the cast is also solid (again), although no one stands out the way Depp and Nighy did in the first and second films, respectively.

      With all that being said, director Gore Verbinski’s film still feels like a convoluted business drama rather than a swashbuckling adventure. With so much dialogue wasted in bartering, it’s not always clear who’s betraying whom or what each character truly desires. With confusion comes indifference from the viewer, who gives up trying to follow the story and zones out until the next fight scene.

      These also bring disappointment. In the past the actions sequences have been done on a grand scale, and when accompanied by Hans Zimmer’s musical score made for deliriously entertaining fun. But “At World’s End” doesn’t have very many action scenes, and there’s certainly nothing here that doesn’t reach beyond what the franchise has already accomplished. The lone exception to this is the rain-soaked finale that, unto itself, is very well done. The sets and look of the film are what we expect, with much of it reminiscent of the famous Disney ride that is its inspiration.

      Orlando Bloom and others have said the script for “At World’s End” was not finished when shooting began, and it shows. The long, arduous storyline gives the impression that screenwriters Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott couldn’t think of any more fun stories about pillaging pirates drinking rum on the high seas, and instead resorted to a social critique of hegemonic corporate power. When Will, Beckett and Davy Jones are discussing their next business move over tea somebody should’ve realized something was desperately wrong.

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