Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
168min. / PG-13 / USA / English / 2007
Grade: B

Ohh… so close!

At World’s End has got all the wit, comedy and action of the first two movies, but not so much the more down-to-earth story elements that I enjoyed so much. That and the fact that, from start to finish, the movie seems to be on a big adrenaline rush stood out the most to me as I was watching it. Got me wondering whether heroes and Villains ever sleep.

Pirates attempted a feat that Spiderman 3 also tried to pull off, but the results were slightly different. In Spiderman, I could see that they cut short many good scenes in order to cram several villain plot lines into it’s (still lengthy) runtime. In a similar way, Pirates 3 pulls in nearly all major players from the previous movies and tries to cram many plot lines into a 2h 45min slot. Instead of even attempting to slow down the story’s pace, they essentially made one very long ending sequence to Pirates 2. (And it does it in a disproportionate way, unlike parts of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.)

It fell short of my expectations, but of course, I still enjoyed watching it. I mean, pirates swinging from mast to mast with - c’mon, who can resist? And now that many loose ends from Pirates 1 & 2 have been tied fairly neatly, I hope they can slow things down a bit.

-Ray