Ship of fools

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 quick enough so that one didn’t have time to ponder the rampant inconsistencies it relied on, and provided cinema’s first overt butt pirate, the sw-shbuckling Capt. Jack Sparrow (played by some guy named Johnny Depp). Oh … and it had zombies. Man, you can’t top a family film with zombies, can you?

Well, The Mouse Factory can sure as hell try, lining up all the original cannons and giving it their best resounding shot in the second installment. And it’s not a bad fusillade, hitting its target more often than not. It’s also a bit darker than the first, what with graphic images of crows plucking out eyes with their beaky beaks.

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 Dutch 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. Davy Jones isn’t having any of that, what with having gone seriously to seed after The Monkees broke up and ending up with an octopus for a head and a bunch of icky-looking dudes for a back-up band. There’s also hellz-a-Kraken (a giant squid-sorta-thing, but nastier) in the mix. And cannibals. And more new characters introduced to mix with the already established characters to the point that the movie runs about a half-hour too long just so everyone gets some screen time.

It’s all well and fun, despite being a little unfocused as to what it really wants to be, and so tries to be everything. At one point, an anachronistic kitchen sink plummets from the sky and knocks Sparrow ass-over-teakettle (well, not really … maybe on the extended-cut DVD). Set pieces go on interminably, although sometimes they have a punchline. Actually, most of the movie operates in set-up/punchline mode, and really doesn’t bother with a plot. Amusingly enough, Depp veers a little closer to Cher than Keith Richards with his mannerisms this time around, but also gets a little darker.

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.