At World's End

This installment of the Pirate series has lush scenery, detailed costumes, amazing battle scenes, some truly hilarious moments and simply fantastic special effects. If you can put your brain on hold, you will probably enjoy the movie. The plot is convoluted to the point of absurdity and in some points the movie does drag. If you rent this lavish spectacle just remember, STOP TRYING TO THINK. Sit back, munch a tub of popcorn and ignore the entire lack of logic in the entire story line.

Spoiler alert!! Warning!!

One aspect that I found accidentally hilarious was that the enemy chosen was the West Indian Company-or East Indian Company?. Apparently, making money is bad if you are a business-at least that seems to be the message of the film. At one point the company hangs scores of people for associating with pirates, including one little boy with an angelic voice.(Yes, they hang the sweet faced child) To further illustrate that big business is the enemy, one of the representatives of the company repeats over and over again as his ship is exploding(great special effects, by the way), "It is just business, just business...."

Of course the real irony, and very funny if you think about it, is that the makers of this film are making an awful lot of money on the merchandising of this series. Although I see nothing wrong in getting rich, it does seem to be a bit hypocritical for the writers to make big business the bad guy without realizing that everyone involved in this film is a member of big business. Ah well, Hollywood and common sense probably are not compatible terms. LOL

Don't look for the love story of Will Turner and Elizabeth Swan to make any more sense. At one point the couple seem to have lost all affection for one another. This isn't as upsetting as one would think as Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley do not have much chemistry together. They both seem like decent actors, just not particularly well matched to play lovers together. At some point the writers must have remembered that they hadn't provided any romance for the young couple because near the end of the film Turner and Swan are suddenly back in love.

The advantage of the lovers' rediscovery of one another is that there is a rousing battle in which they fight a group of soldiers and fish human mutants. In the midst of this battle the two are wed-yes while fighting against amphibian people-by Captain Balbosa. Um..Okay...didn't I warn you not to think too deeply while viewing this film?

A plus for this movie is that many of the actors are pretty good in their individual parts. Johnny Depp apparently could make a reading of the phone book entertaining. Jack Sparrow is a great character not because of spectacular writing(take my word for it, this movie Does NOT have that) but because Depp throws himself into this part. In fact, I wish that they had killed off the young lovebirds and kept just the pirates!

Captain Balbosa, played by Geoffrey Rush, is a great foil for Johnny Depp as the two continue their fight for the Black Pearl. Bill Nighy manages to bring life to the character of Davy Jones despite being completely entrenched in tentacles. His method of killing one of the British men who had stolen his heart-literally, not romantically- and forced the Captain to fight on the East Indian Company's side made me squirm. In fact, the memory of this kill is causing my nose to itch right now.

If the movie could have simply stuck to a basic plot line it might have been a great popcorn movie. Sadly there are so many illogical twist and turns that your head begins to hurt keeping track of them all.

Tia Dalma, the witch, returns but now she is the former lover of Captain Davy Jones. This might have proved interesting, especially considering that Davy Jones is allowed to come to shore one day every ten years for some R&R. Strangely though, the writers decided to make Tia a fifty foot goddess in the form of a female mortal. Um...did I tell you not to think to hard? Apparently, the pirate ancestors, along with an angered Davy Jones-Tia had stood him up on their ten year date- had bound the goddess into human form. Moral of this particular plot is, don't play with the sensitive feelings of octopus men!

Once she is released she morphs into the above mentioned fifty foot woman and then into a very large pile of crabs. I think that she created a whirlpool to separate the pirates from the British ships but this wasn't very clear. Not wanting to give myself a brain hemorrhage, I've decided not to think about this section of the plot.

Very predictably, Swan becomes leader of the pirates because, like in every single modern movie with a plucky female, she has to teach the males in her life how to be strong and tough. Yawn.

I am not going to give away the ending, you will just have to watch this for yourself. It is worth seeing, just remember...DONT THINK!