MATT RAUB: The Pirates 3peat
So here we are, smack-dab in the middle of the unforgiving Summer Blockbuster Land of 2007, we’ve already got 300 Spartans, a few talking turtles, a spider, an ogre, and a whiney Kurt Russell under our collective belts, and we still have so much more to get to. But here we are with the culmination of the summer in Disney’s third installment to their Pirates of the Caribbean franchise entitled World’s End.
Now, going into this film I had pretty high expectations, which I normally don’t, but this film had enough build up in the first two films to get just about anybody excited for an outcome. So with that said, I had a few issues with the movie as a whole, but before we get to that, so as not to ruin tradition, lets break down the film into the specified categories.
Starting off with the best element of the film, the acting, I was more than pleased with the performances of the cast. Geoffrey Rush returns as Captain Barbosa and did an amazing job playing off of Depp’s Captain Jack. His performance is full of creepy glances and pirate lingo which I had completely no idea what it meant, but it still sounded awesome. Knightley was impressive in stark comparison to her role in the first film, this film was meant as the “all grown up” point in her life where she’s no longer the dainty, naïve Governor’s daughter, and has embraced the pirate way of life. Orlando Blooms role, while large in the last 20 minutes of the film, was somewhat lacking in the other 2 hours and 40 minutes. There seemed to be way too many different parties to give enough screen time to each of them. Bill Nighy did an amazing job, of course.
Which brings us to the final member of our massive leading cast, Captain Jack Sparrow. I only had two major problems with this film, we’ll get to number two later, but the biggest one was the unnecessary, force fed comic relief in this film. It isn’t even considered to be comic relief because it consumes 90% of the movie, which just makes the other 10% well needed dramatic relief. I was happy in the first two films where our comedy came mostly from our two would be pirates Pantel and Ragetti, and the occasional wackiness from Depp’s Sparrow, but in this film, Captain Jack ends up going crazy in Davey Jones’ locker, which apparently makes everything, yes everything he says sound like it was written by Larry David. Now normally I’m the first one to complain that a movie is taking itself too seriously, but this became ridiculous after three hours of zany one liners and slapstick visual jokes. I was rooting for the major death at the end of the movie, only because the audience needed a shellshock to help us realize that it wasn’t a Night at the Apollo.
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