Slowly Learning...

So this was the second half of my theatre hopping matinee the other day (two movies for the price of a cheap one! woo!), and I can't say I was all that impressed here either. I was slow to jump on the original Priates bandwagon. In fact I didn't see it until I rented it (or my roommate rented it, can't remember which even). But I did take to it. I've always been a Depp fan (especially now that I know that he has a French wife that the American press apparently hates). Also, Keira Kinghtley is hot.

But, this is a sequel, so I didn't get my hopes too high (good thing). Much like Clerks II, Pirates II lost all of the charm that made the first one so good. It's almost like it's the same story over again, except more over the top, and more dependent on special effects. There's nothing new here that really drew me in. Sure Depp's performance was great, but he was better in the first. And so was the writing. The story here just seemed haphazardly thrown together and not hashed together too nicely. The script needed trimming, the scenes needed trimming, the whole thing needed to be edited and trimmed down.

And a word to directors, just because the first movie was a hit doesn't mean you can make a second film that drags out to two and a half hours long, and still doesn't end! That's right, there's no real end. This movie falls prey to all the pitfalls of a sophore film when a thrid one is already being planned and worked on. It makes it almost impossible to follow most of it without having seen the first (and how can you go 2.5 hours with almost no character development?), and leaves you hanging at the end with almost no resolution to the whole thing. Very few films can pull that off. The first would the be Star Wars trilogy (the real one, the good one), and second would be Lord of the Rings (which was three to begin with, and came out in the course of only three years). Why did it work with those? Because they were epic trilogies that were dramas at their heart and soul and told a story that people wanted to follow. You can't do the same with a comedic action film. It doesn't work that way. People come to movies like this to laugh and see action, not to be left hanging for a third installment who knows when in the future.

So basically this movie was an even bigger disappointment than Clerks II. At least there was still something to enjoy in Clerks II. About halfway into Pirates (maybe even only 1/3 of the way in) I lost most of my interest in the story. It's a lot like the Matrix Reloaded. It is more of the same thing as the original, but without the novelty and charm of the original, and it leaves you hanging requiring a third film to make any sense out of anything. But Reloaded at least had more of a story to make you want to watch the thrid (sort of).

RATING: Worth the dollar theatre (if you've got three hours to kill), Worth a Netflix rental (if the thrid one actually pans out and you need the filler in between the two to figure out what's making sense).