There’s a reason “Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl” plundered box office dollars with such ruthless abandon back in 2003: It was one of those infectious crowd-pleasers in which the actors and filmmakers seemingly had as much fun making the movie as the audience did watching it.
One gets a slightly different vibe from the sequel, “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest”: That of a franchise determined to one-up itself. Director Gore Verbinski (“The Ring”) and mega-producer Jerry Bruckheimer have summoned bigger battle scenes, freakier villains, spicier romance and a lavish, convoluted story line that knots itself up like so much neglected rigging. It’s a wondrous if unwieldy thing, likely to dazzle audiences but – by the same process – leave them with a pronounced case of blockbuster seasickness.
Virtually all of the original cast returns, including “Lord of the Rings” fetish object Orlando Bloom as swashbuckling blacksmith Will Turner, Keira Knightley as high-born tomboy Elizabeth Swann and Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow, that riotous caricature of sword-swinging daring and gypsy foppishness that netted the actor his first Oscar nomination.
Back at the sun-splashed West Indies outpost where the first movie unfolded, Will and Elizabeth find their long-awaited wedding day scuttled by Lord Beckett (Tom Hollander), a sniveling envoy of the all-powerful British East India Trading Company who takes the pair into custody for aiding and abetting Sparrow, branded an enemy of the crown. In fact, Beckett wants to recruit Sparrow to tame the Caribbean. And so, holding Elizabeth’s life as collateral, he dispatches Will to find the pirate – magic compass, undead monkey and all – and bring him into the fold. (A selling-out, in the hardtack vernacular employed by screenwriters Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio, that would be “bad for every mother’s son what calls himself a pirate.”)
Out at sea, Sparrow has his own problems. Years ago, he cut a deal with phantom seaman Davy Jones to rescue his beloved ship, the Black Pearl, from the bottom of the ocean. Now payment is due, and Jones has dispatched his goon – the monstrous, multitentacled, ship-devouring Kraken – to collect. (A marvelous special effect, the Kraken, inspired variously by “Jurassic Park” and the stop-motion legacy of Ray Harryhausen.)
Without much ado – unless you count an island infested with cannibals and a delightful bit in which Depp is tossed around like a human shish kebab as “ado” – Will is reunited with Sparrow. Elizabeth, who escapes from the clink with the help of her governor father (Jonathan Pryce), quickly follows suit. And so begins a confounding, crisscrossing derby of motivations that runs roughshod over the simple summer escapism at hand. Sparrow, looking at an eternity of torturous servitude aboard Jones’ ghastly ship, the Flying Dutchman, double-crosses Will to help even his debt. For his own part, Will is determined to steal the key that unlocks a treasure chest containing Jones’ still-beating heart, ripped from his body after a failed love affair. (Only by destroying the cursed organ can Will free his long-lost pirate father, played by Stellan Skarsgard, from Jones’ hideously mutated crew).
As for Elizabeth, she’ll do whatever it takes to return to the marriage altar — including manipulating Sparrow’s affections for her, a motif that starts to feel strongly (but not unpleasantly) like Han and Leia’s testy flirtations in the “Star Wars” movies.
“Dead Man’s Chest” never lapses into tedium, but – at 150 minutes, with a third act that feels like a drawn-out shell game – it comes dangerously close. Fortunately, Verbinski has the munitions to fight it out, particularly in the case of Jones and his crew, a grotesque menagerie of half-man, half-sushi freaks (one looks like a puffer fish, another like a hammerhead shark) seemingly hatched in Dr. Moreau’s Sea World wing.
Jones, played by British character Bill Nighy, is the creepiest of the lot – a pipe-smoking CGI tyrant with a beard of squirming, squid-like tendrils. Pity the poor soul who wanders into this state-of-the-art villain’s locker.
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