Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) Hamster Rating: 3.5 pellets

STARRING: Johnny Depp [Captain Jack Sparrow], Orlando Bloom [Will Turner], Keira Knightley [Elizabeth Swann], Bill Nighy[Davey Jones], Stellan Skarsgard [Bootstrap Bill], Tom Hollander [Cutler Beckett], Jack Davenport [James Norrington], Kevin McNally [Joshamee Gibbs] For me, 2003's Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl was the film I hated to love. It was gratutious, imperfectly realized and almost completely ripped off from pirate movies of Hollywood's past, yet managed to be hugely entertaining and charming enough to draw me back for repeated viewings. That's an odd balance to strike, and one that would be even harder to maintain for a sequel when Johnny Depp's slurring and prancing are no longer novelties. As I took my seat in the packed theater house, part of me was looking forward to being disappointed. Annoyingly, Dead Man's Chest not only failed to disappoint, it had the gall to actually impress me just the tiniest bit. Curse you, Jerry Bruckheimer and Gore Verbinski, with your pandering, money-grubbing ways! While the sequel is by no means perfect, it has enough good intentions and winking charm that you forgive its flaws. The first of these is the running time. At two and a half hours long, the film is needlessly self-indulgent, especially given the convoluted plot, which involves Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp, natch) running from a blood debt owed to Davey Jones (a beautifully tentacled Bill Nighy), whilst young lovers Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) embark on a mission to clear themselves of a gallows appointment, all of which ends up hinging on the whereabouts of a certain locked chest and its gruesomely supernatural contents, which is also eagerly desired by a greedy, priggish agent of the East India Trading Company (Tom Hollander). Cluttering things up further, we have ex-Commodor Norrington (Jack Davenport) showing up to partake in some nifty three-way sword-fighting, Bootstrap Bill (a heavily barnacled Stellan Skarsgard) eager to make amends to Will, and a huge mythical sea monster (the Kraken) eating ships in the open ocean. Pace yourselves, mateys! And since there's a third installment on the way, the writers (duo Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio) leave all of it to be resolved next May, which leaves one feeling a bit jipped by the time the end credits roll. Fortunately, Dead Man's Chest is brilliantly executed otherwise. Moviegoers expecting another lighthearted romp like Curse of the Black Pearl will need a few minutes to settle in, as Dead Man's Chest is a much darker and more sophisticated piece of work. One of the problems with Pearl was that it tried too hard to be silly, a common fault among Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio scripts (Road to El Dorado and Godzilla come to mind). Dead Man's Chest is much more cleverly written, with slapstick humor and quippy dialogue worked into the action naturally, without the awkward Vaudevillian feel of the first movie. Although saying a film has good CGI these days is about the same as saying it's in colour, Dead Man's Chest is uncommonly well-rendered. Davey Jones' crew of fishified sailors are as creative, slimy and grotesque as you can possibly imagine and then some (particulary one scene where a sailor literally untangles himself from the bulkhead of The Flying Dutchmen), making Barbossa's skeletal zombie crew seem decidedly mediocre in comparison. The Kraken, too, is a fantastic feat of technical wizz-bang that is truly terrifying. Verbinski seemed to be pushing the limits of the PG-13 rating, for sure. The action sequences are also inventive and large-scale, highlights being a swordfight in a rolling mill wheel and a chase between the Black Pearl's hapless crew and tribe of cannibals, the former all the while trapped in a roll cage of human bones. There's actually very little swordplay at all, and it has been relegated to a supporting role in favor of the more fantastic action sets. And special mention must be given to Captain Jack Sparrow, the human shish kebob. Never was the character's Looney Toons roots exploited to such hilarious excess! Speaking of Sparrow, Johnny Depp delivers a dependable, if somewhat hammy performance as everyone's favourite pirate. The movie doesn't have the time to dwell on his every flourish and grin, and frankly Sparrow is too busy to play it up like he did in Curse of the Black Pearl, but Depp has obviously had time to settle into the character and gives the audience what they came for. Orlando Bloom's one-note Will Turner is at least on-key, if not terribly interesting to watch, as is Tom Hollander's smarmy Cutler Beckett. Keira Knightley, constrained by her role as The Girl, fares slightly better and isn't just screensaver material. Barely just. And then there's Bill Nighy, whose wonderfully idiosyncratic performance as Davey Jones easily overshadows even Johnny Depp's Sparrow. Speaking in a weirdly enunciated burr, his human eyes gazing out from a brilliantly expressive CG face, Nighy steals every frame he's in and makes the mythological pirate something entirely unexpected and lush. He's worth the price of admission, alone. There are no deep thoughts or moral messages to be found in Dead Man's Chest. Make no mistake; this is a superfluous, shallow, manufactured product of Hollywood designed to make obscene amounts of money by playing to the whims and wants of the masses. For that reason I feel motivated by principle to despise Dead Man's Chest the same way I despised Curse of the Black Pearl, and will despise The End of the World when it debuts next spring. That said, Dead Man's Chest is a very good, if imperfect superfluous, shallow, manufactured product, and will most definitely sucker me back for repeat viewings (Curse you, Jerry Bruckheimer and Gore Verbinski!).