(Movie Reviews)My summer movie blockbuster list (and this may not be original but at least it's honest) is: Spiderman 3, Pirates of the Caribbean 3, Harry Potter 5, and The Simpsons.
One down, three to go.
Now that I'm back in the Japanese countryside, access to movie theaters is again a problem (I might have to wait until some of these come out on video tape) but fortunately "Pirates of the Caribbean" was playing at the local Nakatsu one screen theater.
It was the first time I had been to this theater, and, after hearing many bad things about it, me and my co-workers were surprised to find it was actually a pretty decent theater. Our only one minor complaint was that after the movie ended we (and the other Japanese customers in the theater) found ourselves locked in. Apparently the theater staff had forgotten the movie was still running and shut the gates. We all wandered around the theater for a while, and tried to estimate the jump down from the balcony, when after 10 minutes or so someone came running over to lift up the gate.
(It was all quite humorous at the time, but maybe you just had to be there).
Anyway, onto the movie review...
I've read several reviewers who complained that this movie had too much action and too many battle scenes in it. But as far as I'm concerned, a summer movie can never have too much action. So no problem there, but you should at least realize that going in (which you probably do anyway if you've seen the first two movies).
The big problem with this movie, especially the first act, is that it just gets too weird. All those trippy dream-like scenes in the afterlife are out of place in a summer pop-corn movie, and a couple of them go on for way too long.
The plot continues to get more complicated. I lost track of who was betraying who, but I didn't let that bother me too much.
Chow Yun-Fat is added to the cast of this movie, although he is criminally under-used. It is a huge waste to cast one of Hong Kong's biggest action stars in a movie like this, and then not give him any decent fight scenes.
Chow Yun-Fat's Chinese crew end up sailing with Will Turner, Jack Sparrow, and the other protagonists from the first two movies, although the Chinese end up serving the same role in this movie as the native African tribespeople did in those old Tarzan movies. They stay in the background, and whenever a dangerous situation appears a couple of them die just to increase the drama of the situation.
But while some actors are under-used, on the other side of the coin Naomi Harris (Tia/ Calypso) is unfortunately given an expanded role in this movie. Don't get me wrong, I loved Naomi Harris in "28 Days Later", but am I the only one who found her fake Jamaican dialect in this movie was like nails on a chalk board? I think I cringed in every scene she spoke in.
And the dialogue in this movie was just awful. A pity because it was so witty in the first movie, slightly corny but tolerable in the second movie, but is just painful in the third movie.
There is an interesting, but brief, scene at the beginning where civil liberties are being suspended because of the pirate threat. Unfortunately (or given this movie's lack of subtlety, perhaps fortunately) these themes are never followed up on, and instead of making social commentary it ends up creating an odd scene which doesn't really fit with the rest of the movie.
Now, that I've gotten most of those complaints of my chest, onto the positives...
Wow, was that quite a 3rd act, or what? I'm willing to forgive a lot of the movie's other flaws just because of that spectacular action scene at the end. The physics of it didn't really make sense (even by the standards of summer popcorn movies) but if you just suspend all your common sense for 30 minutes and let yourself go it is a wonderful ride.
I'm told there are no current plans for a 4th movie, but the film ends leaving a lot of story threads that could still be further explored, if they ever do decide to make another film someday.
And just in case you haven't seen this movie yet, be advised there is a little scene snuck in after the ending credits if you want to wait for it. I didn't know this and left the theater early, only to be told by my co-workers later what I had missed.
Link of the Day
The GOP's torture enthusiasts
This week's Republican debate was a Jack Bauer impersonation contest.May 18, 2007
IT WASN'T AN edifying spectacle: a group of middle-aged white guys competing with one another to see who could do the best impersonation of Jack Bauer, torture enthusiast and the central character on Fox's hit show "24."In Tuesday's Republican presidential primary debate, Fox News moderator Brit Hume — who appears to have been watching too much "24" himself — raised what he described as "a fictional but we think plausible scenario involving terrorism and the response to it." He then laid out the kind of "ticking-bomb" scenario on which virtually every episode of "24" is premised — precisely the kind that most intelligence experts consider fictional and entirely implausible.
Pirates of the Caribbean 3: Movie Review (Scripted)
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