Review: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

There are very few movies that are amazingly enjoyable while still having an undecipherable plot for the first two hours. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, the third installment of the Pirates franchise that made Jack Sparrow a household name, does exactly that. And while it may make a lot more sense the second time you see it, this pirate movie doesn’t get any less fun the more you watch it: it is truly the first great summer movie of 2007. Now, I may not have loved it as much as Matt Brown (who calls it the best movie he has ever seen), but I do agree with him on many accounts, so I’m just going to lift entire parts of his review to fill out my own. I’m sure he won’t mind (right Matt?).

First, for those of you who may have been living under a rock for the past five years, At World’s End is a movie about pirates. Lots and lots of them. In fact, Matt explains it best:

Are there pirates? Is the Pope Polish? (Uh, German?) You bet your sweet a** there are pirates. There are man pirates, woman pirates, dog pirates, bird pirates, monkey pirates, real pirates, impostor pirates, huge pirates, tiny pirates, mute pirates, sane pirates, insane pirates, Chinese pirates, Indian pirates, French pirates, Persian pirates, fish-man pirates, man-fish pirates, pirates who are part boat, living pirates, dead pirates, kid pirates, adult pirates, lord pirates, internal psychosis pirates, external projection pirates, lover pirates, hero pirates, villain pirates, trickster pirates, competent pirates, incompetent pirates, goddess pirates, Daddy pirates, son pirates, and when every single f**king pirate in the long history of pirateology has gathered in one place to talk about how they’re going to continue to be pirates, there’s even a rock legend pirate.

If that alone isn’t reason enough to go and watch the movie, the film is action packed and wonderfully shot. On top of that, the entire movie is a result of meticulous crafting: the score is stunning and the art direction and costume design is better than Oscar-worthy. Matt, again, says it well:

Significantly darker than its predecessors, At World’s End is also often surprisingly, achingly beautiful, as the travelling squad moves through landscapes fierce and dense, oblique and mad, through a world that is threatening to up-end them clean off the boat and into the wake of history. There is an awareness of this passing of an age that invests the story with unexpected emotion, where previously there was none. To mark the occasion, Hans Zimmer concocts a gorgeous counter-argument to the original Pirates theme, which fits on the musical structure like the tail fin on a Porsche — in other words very, very well, giving moment and lift to the always-zesty Pirates symphonics that serves to remind musically throughout that we are, truly, in deeper waters.

In my eyes, of course, At World’s End is far from perfect. The entire storyline involving Calypso feels contrived and unnecessary, and I still never really felt the chemistry (as I have complained about for the first two films) between Elizabeth Swann and Will Turner — except, maybe in that last bit on shore — but criticizing the film based on those aspects seems nitpicky when examining the visual mastery of the movie.

Sure, the film looks great, but it’s also laugh-out-loud funny. Depp shines again, and Geoffrey Rush is nothing short of brilliant, but the true star of the film is Jack the Monkey, who not only is wondrous comic relief, but turns out to be one of the most essential characters to the plot. For those of you who might struggle understanding what’s going on with said plot for the first half of the movie, do not despair. The second half’s payoff is more than worth the wait. Again, Matt tells us why:

There’s no single quest to be won here (Aztec gold / Dead Man’s Chest); there’s just the future of pirating itself, and a big sucking vortex that does, indeed, pull all the narrative threads towards it like so many rubber duckies towards the drain. What is perhaps most endearing about At World’s End, particularly in its final hour, is the degree to which it actually does achieve on the promise of capitalizing every single arc that screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio have been carefully (and often, not very carefully) setting up for the past two and a half films.

As someone who loves the simple, minimal, and slow-paced come-dramas of Jim Jarmusch and Wes Anderson, it might seem strange that I loved this big-budget, high-intensity, swashbuckling smorgasbord of convoluted plotlines and visual effects. But I must take my hat off to Verbinski and Bruckheimer: they’ve redefined the concept of the “fun summer blockbuster” by actually making Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End tons of fun to watch.