Random Acts of Mind by Dones

Bottom Line: If you saw the first two, you’re required to see this one.

**Note: While this review does assume you have seen the first two POTC films, it contains no spoilers for the current installment**

As much as I adore many movies which are part of a series, I’ve never been much of a fan of the ’serial ending’. This is the sort of thing you’d find in old movie house showings of the Lone Ranger or Flash Gordon or the old Batman television series, and that was spoofed in the TV comedy Soap:

- Will our hero survive?
- How will he escape from his current awful predicament?
- Will he reach the heroine (who is tied to the railroad tracks) in time?
- Will he be able to defeat the evil Mr. X?

…and so forth…

This kind of ending drives me nuts when I see it in favorite shows like Heroes, but it just makes me mad when I’ve laid out $9 to see a film that’s not really one of my favorites and they put a serial ending on it…now I have to go see the next one, so not only did the filmmakers get my $9, they got at least $18 from me. I enjoy and expect some manipulation when I see a film, but when I saw the second Pirates of the Caribbean film last summer (Dead Man’s Chest), I felt betrayed: not only was it confusing and not particularly enjoyable (I wasn’t able to follow a lot of the plot, the action was often too fast for me to make out what was going on–basically it was like watching a televised hockey match without the highlighted puck), but the serial ending ensured I come back this year to see (potentially) another mediocre summer blockbuster, just to find out if the supporting heroes can rescue Captain Jack Sparrow from Davy Jones’ Locker.

So basically, I was expecting At World’s End to be another Matrix Revolutions. It was not. In fact, I heartily recommend this film to fans of the series, as well as to those who (like me) felt let down by the last film.

Some things haven’t changed: the story presumes you are able to follow a lot of newly made-up myths not hand-fed to you earlier in the film or in the series, and when the action is at its swashbuckling apex, it’s still difficult to follow the plot-crucial dialogue that flashes between two sets of characters in the midst of the fighting. At the same time, it was still a fun movie and filled with the great humor I loved in the first film that I somehow felt was overshadowed by my disappointment in the second film. Who knows, maybe I was more ready for things to go a certain way this time around, so it didn’t bother me like Dead Man’s Chest did.

With that being said, let’s sail steady as she goes into the ratings:

Production value: 5/5 stars. This is a no-brainer, as not only were the visuals spectacular, but they were done correctly (that is, believably).

Story: 3.5/5 stars. What can I say? It was a bit fractured at times, and the filmmakers oddly required the viewer to pay close attention to the dialogue in the midst of some of the biggest fighting sequences. I don’t appreciate this, and I’d like filmmakers to avoid such situations as much as possible.

Enjoyability: 4/5 stars: For the record, Curse of the Black Pearl was a 5/5 here, and Dead Man’s Chest was 2.5 for the reasons given above. There’s no way this film was equal to the original, but it’s a marked improvement and I expect the filmmakers to learn from their successes in this film as well as their failures in the previous, and apply the lessons to any further films they choose to make.

Dones’ Rating: Fun popcorn date night summer flick.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 28th, 2007 at 3:31 pm and is filed under Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.