Pirates? Aaaargh.

I don't care how much -money it made this weekend. Really. It got my matinee bucks, and I want them back. I also want the 2.5 hours of my life I spent in the theatre back.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest was bloody awful.

Bugger.

Because I so wanted a couple hours' worth of escape. I enjoyed the first one, and I admired Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Swallow. I laughed. This time, I winced. Depp's performance felt like a parody of a parody; once you've established that a character is over-the-top, how do you top it in the sequel? By making it insufferable.

I'm not going to give away the plot, so don't worry that there are spoilers here. There was an attempt to create a complexity of plot by spinning out several spools of plot thread simultaneously, and trusting the audience to keep them all straight in their heads. All this, while being visibly revolted by the denizens of The Flying Dutchman. This time, the movie producers went for grotesque rather than spooky.

Orlando Bloom is a very pretty boy, but if he has acting talent, it was hidden. And Keira Knightley was feisty and all that, but clearly, the focus of the movie was supposed to be the sideshow geek bad guys and Depp. It wasn't enough to hold my interest. In fact, after the first hour, it pissed me off.

By the end, I felt as if I knew what it was like to be in Davy Jones' Locker. Funny how 2.5 hours can feel like an eternity in hell.

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