Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Suck! (Here Be Spoilers.)
We joined Amy and Rob tonight for a showing of Pirates of the Caribbean 2. It was… eh… okay. I was entertained. There were some good fights and some exciting action sequences. The digital effects were amazing. (I love the sound the Kracken’s tentacles make.) Davy Jones and Bootstrap Bill were also excellently realized. Tom Hollander makes for a suitably hatable villain. (He’ll always be Bosie to me.) But still… eh. I still don’t like Keira Knightley, and the sight of her macking on Sparrow made me rally behind poor Will (who is way too good for her and, by the way, pretty damn hot). Also hot is Jack Davenport, back as a wonderfully scruffy (and morally ambiguous) Norrington. I couldn’t give a crap about anybody else in the movie. Jack Sparrow indirectly caused the death of, like, hundreds of people (his own crew, the ones that picked up Will, the French guys who got his hat), and we’re supposed to care whether everybody risks their own lives to save him? Yeah, yeah, Johnny Depp, Keith Richards, swanning about, blah blah blah fishcakes. I’m so over it. As I’ve said before, two (and a half) hours watching Johnny Depp are never wasted, but the character is really starting to wear a little thin. I don’t care whether they rescue him or not. All I could think was that poor Will should cut his losses and get the hell away from The Curse of the Duckfaced Anorexic. In summation, and as I said as the credits rolled: “Okay, so that was a total Empire Strikes Back ending, except in this version, PRINCESS LEIA’S A WHORE.”
The Snook’s review: “The baddies were the same as in the first movie; they used the same thing-rolling-down-a-hill gag twice in this movie; and there weren’t enough boobies. I liked Davy Jones.”
Addendum: It seems I am not alone in my opinion.
John
July 9, 2006 — 2:45 am
The bits that worked worked really well, but they couldn’t resist repeating themselves (e.g. with the rolling downhill). Depp did his thing again, the supporting cast (Kevin McNally, Mackenzie Crook, Lee Arenberg, Jonathan Pryce) came back and did theirs. Bill Nighy made a marvelous squid-pirate and whilst I wasn’t as taken with Davy Jones’ crew as you I was pleasantly surprised that the CGI worked as well as it did.
Unfortunately, neither Keira Knightley nor Orlando Bloom could carry the film when Cap’n Jack was off-screen. (Jack Davenport, on the other hand, effortlessly stole his scenes. It’d be nice if he could get a leading role on the big screen some day to show us what he can do.) I keep telling myself that this is only half the story, and that the pay-off in the third instalment will make me glad I sat through this one. You know, just like the last part of the Matrix trilogy did.
Worst of all, the film felt awfully long: according to the IMDB the second film ran only 7 minutes longer than the first, but it felt a good half an hour longer. I don’t mind summer blockbusters being a little dumb, but I expect them to move along at a decent clip.
amy
July 9, 2006 — 5:14 pm
yawn….
miss anti feather fee
July 9, 2006 — 8:50 pm
I had fun but it really suffered the second film of the next two syndrome – not being a film on it’s own and yes Jack Davenport did shit all over ms ano knightley and mr i love the ano bloom, both of whom whinged their dialogue- bring on the next young pretty things please. Bill Nighy partially hidden under his tentacles was divine and I wanted much much more of our Geoff Rush- I sighed relief when he came into view and was very pissed when the credits then started to roll. Bring on #3 asap
amy
July 9, 2006 — 11:34 pm
‘miss anti feather fee’. brilliant. and the tee looks cute.
Kris
July 10, 2006 — 10:32 am
The more I think about it, the pacing was probably the source of most of the problems. Just this morning I was remembering the random subplot about Elizabeth stowing away on the ship, and the mates being superstitious about the dress, and the whole puppet show thing she did. Why not just show her getting aboard as a boy and then cut to her stepping off in Tortuga? Would’ve cut 15 minutes out that didn’t add anything to the story.
Marci
July 10, 2006 — 1:03 pm
I would’ve cut out the whole cannibal island scene as well. I still liked the movie overall, and am looking forward to the third (and hopefully last) movie.
Kitty
July 11, 2006 — 10:43 am
Okay, but she wasn’t just “macking on” Sparrow because she was a slut. She was doing it to distract him. And whether you like her character or not, calling the actress a “duckfaced anorexic” is just gratuitously mean. People look like they look. Castigating them for it is senseless. I love your blog and was actually a little shocked to see a comment like that.
Kris
July 11, 2006 — 10:55 am
Did you miss the bit with the compass? How it kept pointing to him because he was what she “truly wanted” and she’d get all miffy and pout? Yeah, she was distracting him all right, but she’d already betrayed poor Will long before that.
And yeah, the anorexic is a bit uncalled-for, but it’s mostly a reaction to her appearance at the Pirates premiere (you could open envelopes on those collarbones) and her denial that while her grandmothers all had it, she most definitely doesn’t. Uh-huh. And neither did that Olsen twin.
I stand by duckfaced though. Girl has a duckface. She’s pretty for a duckface, but I think gaining ten pounds would do wonders for erasing the angularity of that jutting jaw.
Bex
July 11, 2006 — 8:13 pm
Went to see the movie with some queer girls/straight guys.
Its agreed – the girls would turn straight for Capt Jack, the boys would be gay.
Yep – told my GF shes getting a pirates outfit, dreads and black eye pencil LMAO!
Kris
July 14, 2006 — 12:27 pm
SPAM DELETED. Dude, if I wanted to write movie reviews to pimp website ads, I’d do it on my own site!