Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

To be fair, the first Pirates of the Caribbean wasn’t all that bad for a movie based on a Disneyland tourist trap. It had a decidedly loopy air about it, skittered about quickly enough and provided cinema’s first overt butt pirate, the swashbuckling Capt. Jack Sparrow. This time around, Elizabeth and Will (Keira Knightley and what I assume is an animatronic from the Anaheim ride) have their nuptials blocked and are threatened with a good hanging if they don’t track down the Cap’n and bring back his hinky compass. The East India Trading Co. wants it for world domination, or some such thing. Sparrow, in the interim, is concerned with tracking down Davy Jones’ chest, or locker or whatever to avert an abiding fate worse than having to appear in a sequel to The Country Bears. Most of the movie operates in set-up/punchline mode, and really doesn’t bother with a plot. Just because it’s better than anything else that has come out this summer doesn’t mean that it’s good, just that it’s better than anything else that has come out this summer.