(SMW) - Somewhere around the midpoint of "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," swashbuck... MOVIE REVIEW: 'Pirates&
(SMW) - Somewhere around the midpoint of "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," swashbuckling Will Turner battles an adversary atop a giant water wheel that is rolling downhill at breakneck speed. Inside the runaway wheel, Capt. Jack Sparrow somersaults like a hamster as he chases a key that bounces from paddle to paddle, eluding his grasp.
The madcap scene is a fair representation of the film. "Dead Man's Chest" is a whirligig of misadventures and pratfalls that rushes by at delirious velocity. At heart, it's a live-action cartoon, putting its characters through an obstacle course of escapades so exuberantly anarchic they would fit comfortably into a Wile E. Coyote/Road Runner brawl.
Entire sequences are little more than eye-popping exhibitions of insane stunt work, with rubber-bodied actors bouncing off ship decks, palm trees and boulders as if they were beachballs. This is a film where the cliff-hangers, cliff-leapers and cliff-fallers come too fast and furious to count. At two hours and 30 minutes, the story has its repetitive and wearisome passages, and the plot emerges only to bog things down, but for most of its length it positively dances with gusto.
After a slack opening in which a hissable functionary compels Will (Orlando Bloom) and his fiancée, Elizabeth (Keira Knightley), to capture Johnny Depp's roguish Capt. Jack, the film quickly gets the wind in its sails. Jack is once again in trouble with diabolical monsters lurking beneath the waves. This time his nemesis is Davy Jones himself, captain of the Flying Dutchman and master of the fearsome Kraken, a huge octopus that can pull ships to the ocean floor.
Jones (Bill Nighy) is an uncanny creation. He and his crew have been transformed into mongrel fish-men resembling something H.P. Lovecraft might dream up after eating a tainted clam. Good luck getting the kids to eat their fish sticks after seeing this.
The key to defeating Jones involves a voodoo priestess, a box containing a beating heart, a cannibal island, an undead monkey and the surprise return of characters from the first film. The scriptwriters have served up a large and complicated story - they make a joke of pausing at times to explain it - but director Gore Verbinski keeps the ship steadily on course.
He also makes the film look great, whether his camera is pointing at a tropical seascape or the swarthy, sin-pitted faces of the pirate crew. In fact, he may have piled on the visual flourishes too abundantly. We really don't want much more from a "Pirates" movie than large servings of excitement and Depp's wobbly Capt. Jack, and we get plenty of both.
Depp relishes the role, making Jack the most subversive character ever to appear in a Disney film: a sneak, a liar, and a woozy lecher of ambiguous sexuality. He wears his debauchery lightly, though. "Pirates" is full of mischievous double-entendres that will float over the heads of the Gymboree crowd while the adults cackle with glee.
Depp savors every naughty line, his little mustache sliding into a diagonal smirk with an effrontery that is both funny and bracing. And his physical control is remarkable. He moves like a drunken cat. Even if you've watched the original "Pirates" movie repeatedly, his prancing, off-kilter body language can leave you laughing and open-mouthed at the same time. You get the feeling that if he'd been born 300 years later he would have invented rock 'n' roll.
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