At Wits End (Pirates of the Caribbean - At World's End (DVD))

Member Name: tazzywazzy

Product:	Pirates of the Caribbean - At World's End (DVD)
Date:	11/06/07 (264 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great Special Effects

Disadvantages: I had to write a review to fit them all in

The long awaited, and final instalment has finally arrived - Pirates of the Caribbean, At World's End, I was really excited, as I had thoroughly enjoyed the first instalment, The Curse of The Black Pearl (2003), but was seriously let down by the second, Deadman's Chest (2006), I felt that Deadman's Chest acted as a filler, almost as a bit of a "trailer" to lead up to the grand finale that would be the third and final instalment of the Pirates of the Caribbean Trilogy/Franchise, whatever you want to call it….

….Disappointingly, I was wrong, At World's End has a poor story line, poor script, the only redeeming features of this film are the sets, locations & special features, I would even go as far to say that this is just a great big w*nk for the Director & Production crew, in my eyes it is just a showcase of what they can achieve by throwing mega bucks at a movie & messing around with CGI (*mee-owwww, emphasis being on the oww).

~Plot~

Under the command of Lord Beckett, if you are associated with piracy, you will be hung. Beckett has somehow managed to persuade Davey Jones to destroy all pirate ships.

The crew of the Black Pearl (which now includes Elizabeth Swann (Knightly) & Will Turner (Bloom)) are in Singapore, as they need to get hold of a map that will lead them to Davey Jones' Locker (land of the dead), where Captain Jack Sparrow (Depp) is trapped (after the last instalment), so that they can save him.

Will Turner wants to get hold of the Black Pearl so that he can rescue his father, Bootstrap Bill from the curse of the Flying Dutchman.

Calypso (Naomie Harris), the Goddess of the Sea, who was trapped in human form by the Nine Pirate Lords, wants to be returned to her original form.

That is about all that actually happens.

~My thoughts~

Well, you have already heard what I thought about the film in general, but let's investigate in a bit more depth, starting with my main gripe - the length.

The run time is 168 mins, which is nearly 3 hours long, when I watched it at the cinema, there was an interval, which I found particularly annoying, judging by the experience of others that have watched the film, they have all had intervals during their showings, I guess this is because the kiddies bums get sore after a bit.

To be honest, this film could have actually been shown in about 90 mins and this probably would have made the film better, as there are a lot of long drawn out scenes or completely unnecessary scenes, that really have no relevance to the script whatsoever.

The next thing that I am going to pick apart is the character development, this is not a dig at the actors, the acting itself is just as good as it was in the previous instalments, but the way in which the characters have been developed is disjointed and each character seems almost "unaware" of the other characters in the story, they do not appear to have any sort of relationship or emotional attachment to other characters in the story.

Bloom's character, Will is extremely hard to identify with, and I felt almost no connection with the character whatsoever, I also felt that although the story was extremely long, there did seem to be some gaps in the plot, which, if filled in or elaborated, may have made it easier to understand the way he prioritised things.

Knightly's character Swann, has now become quite manly, and any traits that helped you to connect with her character are now long gone, she does not seem to have any emotional connection to any of the other characters whatsoever.

As for Depp's character Sparrow, he has just become a babbling mess, which is amusing, but does become slightly tedious after a while, and in truth, his character has not developed at all since the first film.

Focusing on the good points now - this film is visually stunning, the sets are amazing, and a lot of money has clearly been spent, but that's where the positive points end.

After about two hours, no matter how visually stunning a film is, it is going to get dull, I in fact fell asleep towards the end of the film, the fight scenes are way too long and drawn out, and even with the addition of a "Will - Elizabeth" storyline inserted into a fight scene, which was actually laughable and completely ridiculous, I still managed to fall asleep, despite the loud noises, I could no longer fight back my heavy lids - I fell asleep, awoke about five mins later, it appeared that nothing had happened, so I once again drifted off, this continued for a while until I woke up at the end, an it seemed that we were back to the beginning of the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy once again, the characters were pretty much all back to where they had started in Curse of the Black Pearl, only a couple of million pounds richer and a bit more famous.

I have awarded this film one star for the special effects and one star for being able to eek this franchise out for so long and make so much money out of really one script - giving this film a grand total of two stars….well done them!

Summary: Basically one great big Hollywood w*nk