Five weeks after it premiered in theatres, I finally got a chance to see Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. This is most definately the hit of the summer, and for me it is the best movie I’ve seen this year (considering the only other movie I’ve seen is X-Men 3). I went to see it at the Regal Germantown Stadium 14 theatre in Germantown, MD while visiting my brother with my parents for the weekend. We caught the 4:15 show with our free Blingo tickets that arrived in the mail recently. I was pretty surprised that five weeks into it’s summer run that the theatre was almost as filled as when I saw X-Men during its second week in theatres with roughly one-third of the seats taken. The previews consisted of Night at the Museum, Talladega Nights, Lady in the Water, Invincible, Accepted, and a teaser for Transformers. None really garnered any considerable crowd reaction, but the only one that interested me was the Transformers teaser even if it really didn’t show anything (as expected). I’d be interested in seeing it in an updated CGI feature movie since I really liked the 80′s cartoon as a little kid. As usual, I smuggled in a can of soda, particularly an Aruba Jam Sprite Remix this time and a pack of green apple Mentos.
If you haven’t seen Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest yet, one word describes it, “action”. Pretty much, the entire movie is one action scene connected to another with small pauses to progress the storyline. Even the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie didn’t have close to as much action as this one, but was equally fun and humorous. From Johnny Depp’s flamboyant performace as Captain Jack Sparrow to Orlando “Legolas” Bloom’s quick-witted comments as Will Turner to Keira Knightly’s bantering as Elizabeth Swann, this movie is exactly the Hollywood blockbuster hit I’ve been looking for since the most recent Harry Potter, Star Wars, and The Lord of the Rings movies. Even better was that length of the movie at 150 minutes was definately long enough to fill out the storyline while leaving me really satisfied. One of the gripes I had with X-Men 3 was that it was much too short giving me the feeling the director could easily have added more content. Nothing in Pirates really left me wanting more except for a few small things (not nearly enough for me to detract from enjoying the film).
Other than a few quirks, this movie rates as one of my favorites. The family-style humor, the amazing backgrounds, complementary soundtrack, and the non-stop action make this one special. Everything I liked about the first movie is brought back and taken up a notch. And although some might think it was a little overdone, the CGI was used very effectively to great success.
Lastly, it’s been confirmed for a while that Pirates of the Caribbean 3 will be coming next year in May 2007 a la Matrix Revolutions-style (Most of the taping was done at the same time as this movie). It has been speculated that the title will be called “At World’s End” following the quote at the conclusion of this movie. Chow Yun Fat will be playing a role as well so look out for him in a possible major character. The question is whether there will be a Pirates of the Caribbean 4. Anyway, I’ll be at the theatres to see the next one for sure.
Things to look for (in very vague, broad terms) if you haven’t seen the movie yet.
- Depp bouncing on a stick
- Impromptu fruit kabob
- “Gareth” the genius
- Cantonese hermit crab guy
- Indy sandbag replacement technique
“Gareth” is the best part of the movie. How come no one noticed that he’s not a real member of the Black Pearl crew?
Testing the edit feature. Test.
Kevin wrote on August 12, 2006 at 9:41 pm:
Testing the quote plugin. :o