MOVIE REVIEW
'Pirates 3' hunts for plot
by KEN BARTOLOTTA Reporter

In recent weeks, the third installment of "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" has been panned by most critics as a great disappointment.

My question is, with a movie based on a Disney theme park ride, with a lead actor whose performance rests largely on a Keith Richards persona and a villain who has tentacles for a beard, how serious are we supposed to take this movie in the first place?

One of the most notable issues that viewers and critics have taken with the movie is its length, clocking in at just under three hours, not to mention its jumbled plot.

Both these points are valid as the movie does fail at intertwining a number of plots, and sadly this issue is not well hidden under a guise of special effects, a watermark of many Hollywood blockbusters.

I've often question why producer Jerry Bruckheimer opted to make the sequels, and wondered if there was enough here to warrant two more movies. But sequels are part of life these days and if there's money to be made then you can almost count on them.

Still the movie is not without its charm, and it's always fun to revisit the sordid affairs of Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow, whose staggering androgyny was a large part of the first film's success and single-handedly launched the franchise.

Perhaps the funniest and most enjoyable part of this third installment features a hallucinating Depp arguing with a crew of Captain Jack Sparrows as he serves his solitary purgatory in Davy Jones' loc ker.

Unfortunately, Depp's just not in it enough, leaving us to deal with the wooden and lifeless performance of Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley. However, I must admit that the latter's beauty did serve me well as I struggled through this three-hour mess.

But bad acting is something I've come to expect in these sort of mega-movies, but even with the thickest skin for such faulty efforts, the movie just isn't an enjoyable one. It's not fun and seems to have lost the swashbuckling excitement of the first film.

But the biggest flaw here is the plot, and I must shamefully admit that I left the movie with as many questions as I started with, and if there was any form of resolution among these characters it was lost on me.

Even the short appearance by Keith Richards, barely a 10-minute part for the aging rocker, wasn't enough to save the movie. However, when he picks up a guitar and begins to strum a tune, I found myself voicing a request for "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction."

With the May trilogy craze now coming to an end, and a majority of audiences bored by both "Shrek The Third" and "Spider-Man 3," let's hope the summer campaign that started out so promising can redeem itself with the likes of "Transformers" and "The Simpsons."