High spirits, fantastical creations stuff 'Dead Man's Chest'

It qualifies as a hybrid horror film. It's even a bit of a jungle adventure. But most of all, "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" is a broadly comic swashbuckler, which, despite reservations, should out-pace and out-appeal even its successful 2003 predecessor.

It's one elaborately produced epic in which the money is on the screen.

We look at 6,000 of the better movies from yesteryear and think, "They don't make 'em like that anymore." Conversely, they never did make 'em like this; here you believe your widened eyes.

The story is so elementary it's never more than a pretext for the action scenes and Johnny Depp's mugging.

Depp again plays Jack Sparrow, captain of the Black Pearl, such as it is.

Looking even worse than his vessel, he has crooked teeth, grimy skin and unwashed dreadlocks. Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley), his ally, reminds him he has hygienic issues.

Jack just naturally flashes the crazed look of one whose good sense keeps dropping out. He expresses himself with the florid gestures of one trying to mask inebriation. Or maybe instability.

His search for a key is never more than what Alfred Hitchcock called a MacGuffin, an object or a secret whose sole function is to set the plot in motion.

Jack's chief adversary is the tentacle-headed Davy Jones (Bill Nighy), captain of the mythical Flying Dutchman and all the better a heavy for his revolting, slimy appearance.

Jack is aided in his quest by Elizabeth's father, Gov. Weatherby Swann (Jonathan Price), plus the blandly heroic Will Turner (Orlando Bloom, who has nothing to play), and Will's father, "Bootstrap" Bill Turner (Stellan Skarsgard, who enacts the truth of his character despite environs that are not conducive to sincerity).

"Dead Man's Chest" was designed in the spirit of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy with lots of fantastical confrontations, but the new film is much lighter in tone.

But like the earlier trilogy, it suffers from a repetition and excess of incident. At two-and-one-half hours -- about 15 minutes longer than the first "Pirates" -- "Dead Man's Chest" was written by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio more as a blueprint for activity than as an amplification of characters met earlier.

Shot in almost unrelieved shades of gray, it begs the garish palette of the swashbucklers that featured Errol Flynn and Tyrone Power. The loss of real Color by Technicolor is felt especially in movies such as this.

The sheer pace of the editing reduces tragic moments to anonymous dismissals. The point is never that someone dies but that the audience be excited by the way he's dispatched.

It's all but impossible, though, not to appreciate the high spirits with which Gore Verbinski has staged nearly every scene. It's played out upon Rick Heinrichs' spectacular production design, and abetted by a zingy Hans Zimmer score.

"Dead Man's Chest" might be too intense for young children, but most of the rest of the audience will devour it hungrily.

By: Ed Blank
source: Pittsburgh Tribune