[Hill-Shatar]

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest:

THE GOOD:
Excellent acting, plotlines and graphics on the part of the cast and crew for this movie. While keeping to the pirate genre, they managed to add some totally unexpected elements to keep the audiences happy, along with a good bit of backstabbing and the reuse of a lot of good characters.

Also, in keeping with piracy tradition, the captain continues to be a boisterous, womanizing man who will never set down, which, to my great enjoyment, is used well at many parts of the film.

THE BAD:
While I'd like to say none, I did find the work on the crew of the other vessel to be a bit overdone. While interesting, the dank ship filled with these automotons, along with a few scenes involving survivors of wrecked ships, were not the best part of the film I had come to expect.

However, these parts are still interesting, and do add another sign of how "evil" our antagonist is.

SUMMARY:
People who read -- I tried to cut back on spoilers as much as possible, leaving some loose plot bits that are mostly superficial open for interpretation. However, there's always the chance I let something slip, so be careful.

I don't usually wait for movies when they come out. Oh, I waited for the third Lord of the Rings movie, amongst a few others, with most of the population of North America, but that was an extreme rarity. I'm proud to say that Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest broke that little tradition of mine.

When the movie started up, it was the typical twisting story that seems common to the piracy movie theme, but especially in this series itself. With Will having his marriage cut off, because of his assistance of a pirate, leading to their arrests, he must go and find Jack and force him to come back to become a privateer of the East India Trading company.

Jack himself, however, seems to have landed himself fairly deeply in trouble, involving the seemingly dead (and strikingly familiar) crew of a sunken ship captained by Davey Jones himself. With this in play, the movie begins it's twirling story line as they rush around the Carribean, in search of salvation from the watery depths.

The first thing I thought when I saw this movie, is that it was not living up to some of my expectations. I had expected it to have a bit more humour in it, but I found it to be a lot more foreboding than I would've liked. The plot line, at times, seemed hard to follow, and eventually you learn to not distinguish how everything connects, but how every single character seems to have their own plans for the chest. Luckily for me, the movie did improve as we moved on with the storyline, so if you become dissapointed at the beginning of the movie, it does get better.

Onto the graphical display in this film -- it's creative. If not a little disturbing, like the walking and talking corpses in the last Pirates of the Carribean. When I first saw Davey Jones' crew, it was pretty appalling, which was what they had been going for. It looked as though the crew had decomposed, rotted, and been nibbled at while under the sea. Some members of the crew seemed to manifest animal characteristics, if not the looks themselves, like on crewman who had a check which blew up like a puffer fish, another who's head acted like a crab, and another who had the head of a hammerhead shark on top of a skeletal, seaweed packed body.

The water effect, with the waves, and the creatures who lurk below, are also worth mention, not only because it's impressive work, but also because how they did it managed to add a lot to the movie as a whole.

I liked how they had Elizabeth's problem with Jack, involving how see thought, or perhaps was, falling for our slightly feminine hero. From clues such as the compass, to events involving the kiss on the boat, Elizabeth's quickly growing ire, or perhaps cunning, was quickly growing to outdo most of the previous cast.

For the carry over of the cast, I was sad to see some of the people I had come to recognize go. We still had the first mate, and the mute man with the parrot, but many were replaced with other cast members, such as a shorter pirate with a shaven head, and a man who appeared to be of South American decent. We do get to see some of the results of Jack's womanizing again, in the form of a handprint on the side of William's face, and we get a new side of our favourite "evil" pirates from the last movie.

When it comes to the ending, I was dissapointed -- while I prefer some endings to leave things open for a sequel, this one was a little too much for me. Tying things up a little more would be nice, although they have definitely set up for an interesting sequel.

In all, if you want to see your typical Action Adventure with a heavy comedy twist, than this is the movie for you. While trying to keep things different, they have kept enough not to make the film alien enough that we don't understand. The acting was excellent, the plotline always changing and hilarious, and the use of old characters in a new light was innovative. Definitely on the must see list, folks.