1. Too much, too long, too twisty.
2. So, Keira Knightley doesn’t make much of a credible pirate captain, does she? Amazing how her complexion and makeup stay perfect throughout the film, though--especially when everyone else has regular bouts with what appears to be flesh eating bacteria and gangrene.
3. But she’s better than Orlando Bloom, who just looks a little bored by the whole thing.
4. On the plus side, so many of the other performances were good that it made it easier to get past the less pleasant bits. Geoffrey Rush is one of the most perfect pirates ever to grace the big screen, Chow Yun-Fat is wonderful in a role that could have been bigger, and Keith Richards is probably the only one on set that didn’t need extensive makeup to play the roll of a leathery pirate. Richards’ voice is surprisingly strong and deep, too--I was happy that they resisted the temptation to make a mockery of Depp’s over-the-top Captain Jack Sparrow by having Richards mimic Depps mimicking Richards. Bravo.
5. Visually it is, of course, brilliant. Some of the best work was during Sparrow’s deranged captivity in Davie Jones Locker--shockingly restrained, stark, and better for the restraint.
6. The opening sequence, with the singing and the hanging was so unconnected from the rest of the movie that I wonder why it was included? Except, perhaps to make the East India Trading Company into the ultimate bad guy of the flick.
7. Which, in fact, bugs me no end. Playing at pirate is fun in a Peter Pan sort of way--talking funny, making bad jokes about “Pirate Booty”, and indulging the little boy fantasy of piracy isn’t such a bad thing. It seems pretty odd that the filmmakers worked so hard to make the people representing either the British government or the East India Trading Company into such phenomenally evil bad guys while simultaneously working so hard to make the pirates into somewhat respectable--even admirable--heroes.
8. Real pirates weren’t people to admire even when they were devoted to shipboard democracy.
9. Still, with all it’s faults, Pirates Part III is a good way to spend a few hours on a Saturday afternoon. It’s occasionally goofy, often funny, at times tense, and decently entertaining. It’s nothing on the original movie, although a slight improvement on the second, but it would be hard to duplicate the surprising freshness of the first film. In general, though, the franchise is offering diminishing returns. That leads me to the last point:
10. Did they really need to leave the door open for another sequel? I thought we had all agreed that this would be the last of the bunch…

And De Doc enjoyed it tremendously.

Linked by the hilarious McCain. Love this guy.