North County Times:NC TIMES ENTERTAINMENT
C+ "Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest"
Starring: Johnny Depp, Keira Knightley, Orlando Bloom, Bill Nighy
Director: Gore Verbinski
Studio: Walt Disney Pictures
Rated: PG-13 (for intense sequences of adventure violence, including frightening images)
'Pirates' a long, noisy sink, but Depp brilliant anyway
By: DAN BENNETT - Staff Writer
The cool splash greeting visitors on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland has for nearly 40 years been welcome relief on blistering Anaheim days.
With the two POC films so far, the splash is a typhoon of blow-them-away spectacle, spitting on the storyline and attempting to drown its characters. The drenching prompts the quick question: Can we imagine how truly uninteresting these films would be without Johnny Depp's delightful performances?
Depp's heroic turns as Capt. Jack Sparrow remind of Cy Young Award-winning baseball pitchers on terrible teams, such as Randy Jones of the Padres or Steve Carlton of the Philadelphia Phillies in the '70s. Depp is a freak of nature in these films, rising above the tidal toilet of overload and steering them to safety.
"Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest" uses its mandate from the box-office success of the first film and treats it as a license to stomp until we drop. The story allows Sparrow a comic return from a floating coffin, but his troubles are just starting.
The Caribbean seas of these times are a mess, and for many reasons. Business types are instigating mainstream commerce, making it difficult for hard-working pirates to continue their good-natured pillaging and rum-guzzling. Worse, Jack finds himself owing a debt to the legendary Davy Jones (Bill Nighy), the dead sailor who toils on the ghostly ship Flying Dutchman. Unless Jack finds a way out of his latest mess, he will toil for eternity for the nasty Jones.
In the mix again are the feisty and lovely governor's daughter Elizabeth (Keira Knightley), engaged to the noble Will (Orlando Bloom). They, too, find themselves at the mercy of Jones and the ghastly ghosts who haunt his ship. Will is also trying to save his father (Stellan Skarsgard) from eternal captivity aboard the ghost ship.
The mutual opponent brings Jack, Elizabeth and Will together this time, the only solution to possess the magic chest Jones carries. Whoever holds the chest, holds the power. This pursuit leads the protagonists on adventures through land and sea, involving cliffs and cannibals, voodoo spells and awful smells, and the biggest challenge of all, the mystical sea monster Kraken, a multitentacled serpent bent on devouring the most precious of them.
Many of the familiar sidebar characters return for the latest adventure, mostly likable folks, often toothless and grimy, but as spirited as they are stinky.
Again, it's what Depp does with Jack that makes the 145-minute voyage swim. Depp modeled the character after Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, and it's a sweet homage. Swishy and mascara-laden, grungy and gold-toothed, Depp's Sparrow has become one of those least-likely sex symbol icons that pop into modern culture every now and then. He will pull the mat from under you as quickly as he will catch your fall, and you gotta appreciate the flair with which he exercises his utter moral ambiguity. Also, his cool hat.
Alas, as maybe they said in the pirate days, or maybe not, Sparrow isn't given enough screen time and opportunity to strut his stuff. "POC2" is far more concerned with effects and action sequences, some painstakingly handmade, some computer-generated. By the final action scenes, arriving in waves of bombast, men battle monsters and gooey ghosts on the high seas. The overload blows up our sensory circuits, and it's all too much except maybe for the most eager-eyed 13-year-old watching this kind of thing for the first time.
Reading the press kit for this film, one can only admire the hard work and sheer tenacity of the cast and crew, who spent a year in different locations, some tortuously hot and barely civilized, and gave their all shooting both this film and the third film in the trilogy, a likely arrival next summer.
If only such labor compacted to a two-hour thrill ride that also excited our minds and our spirit. As is, "Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest" is buckets of eye candy, nutrition shoved off the plank, except for that singular performance, again, almost saving the day.
