At Patience's End

I was going to see Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End on Thursday evening, but I was too tired and, fearing I would have to struggle not to fall asleep, decided against it. Instead, I went to see it on Friday, and I think it's a good thing I did. Had I seen it on Thursday, I would have blamed myself for what I would have thought of the film. "Maybe I was too tired," I would have told myself. "You didn't enjoy it because you were falling asleep," I would have argued. "You'll like it better when you see it again," I would have claimed. But since I saw it on Friday with all my senses alert, there is no excuse: this film should be the last Pirates movie. Please.

At World's End is almost three hours long, and I have no problems with long movies, as long as they draw me into the universe they portray. However, I basically spent said three hours thinking "Now it's going to get better. Now it's going to be funny." It didn't get better, though. And maybe worst of all, it didn't get funny. It actually reminded me of its trailer quite a bit. When I first saw the trailer, I shrugged and thought "Well, I guess they're keeping the good stuff for later." Watching the movie, I had the exact same feeling. A shame there was no "later" after the movie was over.

Since this is a spoiler-free review (as we always do in Sunny Jhanna), there are many things I can't talk about, but I can say that several characters from previous installments don't have the screen time I would have liked them to have, while some others spend way too much time on screen. That is one thing I didn't like, but the main problem was that I didn't care for the story. Just like in the previous films, there is crossing and double-crossing, but the term "double-crossing" is a gross understatement when applied to this movie: there're so many double-, triple-, and quadruple-crossings that you decide not to care and just go along. You start not caring who's working with who, and who's against who. And then, characters you don't care at all jump to the fore, and the combination of story you don't care for and characters you don't care about either proves deadly. To sum this point up, At World's End -just like Davey Jones, and unlike the two previous films- has no heart: it's just an empty shell that leaves you indifferent.

The second problem, and related to this lack of heart, is the lack of audacity. The first two movies left me open-mouthed, unable to believe the audacity of the visuals, the stunts, and the crazy situations the characters found themselves in. I couldn't get my head around how somebody would have the courage and the sheer nerve to come up with outrageous ideas like those, put them in film, and make them work (undead pirates swordfighting, the famous rolling wheel, Jack's escape from the native islanders). But all of a sudden, the movie makers decided to get serious and conservative, and thus At World's End has no such scenes, not even one. Everything feels dull, repetitive; it has a nasty smell of been there, done that --and when they did it the first time it was much better. There is no sense or feeling of exhilarating, rioutous adventure. Instead, we get a story relentlessly and clumsily plodding forward, trying to get the job done and make it work. But it doesn't.

Finally, the third and maybe worst problem is that At World's End is just not fun (or funny). I laughed out loud with Curse of the Black Pearl and Dead Man's Chest. The dialogue was witty, the situations hilarious, the surprises fun and exciting. With At World's End, I laughed out loud once in three hours. I won't say the other jokes and comedic moments fell flat, but I just smiled or chuckled, somewhat amused, instead of roaring with the laughter that possessed me while watching the first two films. And don't even get me started on the monkey: I could have killed that little bastard every time he was onscreen.

I thought the best thing in the movie was Davey Jones, not only because he looks cool, but because of his acting and his subplot (the only compelling one). And he was still affected by not enough time on screen and way too many other things going on. Every time he showed up I kept thinking "Now it's going to get better." And it did, for as little time as Captain Squid was the main focus of attention. But that was too little.

Being nitpicky, the five endings were sort of anticlimatic. It seems The Return of the King made it okay for movies to have a gazillion "final scenes", and if Spiderman 3 wasn't enough proof of that, At World's End gives us another chance to wonder "Why didn't they stop there?" And since we're talking about endings, the Pirates of the Caribbean movies always have a hidden scene after the credits, so stick around to see this one: it certainly is the most relevant out of the three.

So no heart, no audacity, no comedy, no compelling story, not enough Davey Jones. Heck, not even the music was as good as it had been before! All these ingredients make for a dull movie that seems even worse because of its length. I was hoping I would go see it three times like I did with Curse and Chest, but, as it happens, once was more than enough. Before it opened, I was rooting for it to break Spiderman 3's records -which it got by breaking Dead Man's Chest's-, but now that I've seen both, Spiderman 3 is a much better movie, so I'm not sure what I want now. Well, as a matter of fact, I do: I want them to stop making Pirates movies, something I never thought I would say. The first two were fantastic, truly terrific films. This one is sort of okay at best, and that's being generous. Maybe if it had been the first movie, I would have been somewhat impressed. But after seeing the first two, this is just a half-assed attempt at… what? Making more money? Finishing the trilogy? Giving us more Sparrow than we can stand? Boring the audience? In that, they succeeded.