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elfsOmaha and I have been trying to put together a date for going to see Pirates of the Carribean 3, so as part of our preperation we rented PotC2, Dead Man's Chest (nice pun, that). Since my duties to my kid's school had ended at one, we sat down to watch it after lunch. The disc, being a rental, was a bit dirty and scratched, but I swear my cheap, plastic Lasonic player is a bit like one of those old Apple II disk drives: it'll try to play a frozen pizza, and would probably manage to pull some data out of it.
Dead Man's Chest can best be characterized by the caricature of Jack running away from just about everything. That's Johnny Depp through the whole film, running pell-mell through the sets, arms waving, screeching at the top of his lungs.
Hands up if you thought Naomi Harris (the voudoun girl) was hotter than Kiera Knightly.
I've used lj-cut to block off the spoilers. If you've circumvented the lj-cut feature on your friend's list display, consider stopping now.
The East India Trading Company is here to take over the world, with the apparent blessing of the king. The major villain here is a hard-hearted officer, Beckett, of the company who flies the EITC flag as high as his English flag and who is determined to get his hands on the Heart of Davy Jones, with which he can apparently control a sea monster and make the oceans safe for the EITC and only the EITC.
Jones is a sea monster himself, a cthulhoid creature with the head of a cuttlefish and a scaly, slimy disposition. He captains the Flying Dutchman, an evil-looking ship that makes Jack's Black Pearl look positively friendly, and his crew is made up of half-men, half-sea-creature beings who are slowly becoming more and more acquatic with every passing day. We learn that Jack and Beckett have an unspecified hatred between them, and that Jack and Jones have a deal regarding the Black Pearl, and there's more and more cross-complications here than in a chick flick. Beckett wants Jack's compass so he can find the heart, and offers Jack a pardon if he'll turn it over.
Basically, there is a huge mess of intertangled motives and schemes and guilt, reasonably well-written and taking advantage of everyone's basic character.
Omaha thought that the one mistreated character was Norington; that his apparent breakage into a rum-swilling pirate was poorly handled by the writers, and that his noble heritage should have borne him through the rough times. I disagreed; I thought he was portrayed as a brittle stick-up-the-ass character who was held together by his faith in the British system, and when that system was revealed to be flawed and would toss him aside as necessary, that broke him.
The CGI is kinda weak. I'm not sure why, but it felt hokey in places, and there were some mattes that didn't integrate well into the overall shot. That it used the same gag twice (escape in a rolling barrel, done in grand style) was a bad sign, but that can be forgiven. However, the movie as a whole was entertaining and fun, and I enjoyed it even when it went so totally over the top.
Oh, and stay for the credits. There is an end scene.
Dead Man's Chest can best be characterized by the caricature of Jack running away from just about everything. That's Johnny Depp through the whole film, running pell-mell through the sets, arms waving, screeching at the top of his lungs.
Hands up if you thought Naomi Harris (the voudoun girl) was hotter than Kiera Knightly.
I've used lj-cut to block off the spoilers. If you've circumvented the lj-cut feature on your friend's list display, consider stopping now.
The East India Trading Company is here to take over the world, with the apparent blessing of the king. The major villain here is a hard-hearted officer, Beckett, of the company who flies the EITC flag as high as his English flag and who is determined to get his hands on the Heart of Davy Jones, with which he can apparently control a sea monster and make the oceans safe for the EITC and only the EITC.
Jones is a sea monster himself, a cthulhoid creature with the head of a cuttlefish and a scaly, slimy disposition. He captains the Flying Dutchman, an evil-looking ship that makes Jack's Black Pearl look positively friendly, and his crew is made up of half-men, half-sea-creature beings who are slowly becoming more and more acquatic with every passing day. We learn that Jack and Beckett have an unspecified hatred between them, and that Jack and Jones have a deal regarding the Black Pearl, and there's more and more cross-complications here than in a chick flick. Beckett wants Jack's compass so he can find the heart, and offers Jack a pardon if he'll turn it over.
Basically, there is a huge mess of intertangled motives and schemes and guilt, reasonably well-written and taking advantage of everyone's basic character.
Omaha thought that the one mistreated character was Norington; that his apparent breakage into a rum-swilling pirate was poorly handled by the writers, and that his noble heritage should have borne him through the rough times. I disagreed; I thought he was portrayed as a brittle stick-up-the-ass character who was held together by his faith in the British system, and when that system was revealed to be flawed and would toss him aside as necessary, that broke him.
The CGI is kinda weak. I'm not sure why, but it felt hokey in places, and there were some mattes that didn't integrate well into the overall shot. That it used the same gag twice (escape in a rolling barrel, done in grand style) was a bad sign, but that can be forgiven. However, the movie as a whole was entertaining and fun, and I enjoyed it even when it went so totally over the top.
Oh, and stay for the credits. There is an end scene.
