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Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End Our rating: Rate this movie   MPAA rating: PG-13 (for intense sequences of action/adventure violence and some frightening images) Genre: Adventure, Fantasy Theater release: May 24, 2007 by Walt Disney Pictures Directed by: Gore Verbinski Runtime: 2 hours 48 minutes Cast: Johnny Depp (Jack Sparrow), Keira Knightley (Elizabeth Swann), Orlando Bloom (Will Turner), Geoffrey Rush (Hector Barbossa), Bill Nighy (Davy Jones), Naomie Harris (Tia Dalma), Tom Hollander (Beckett), Chow Yun-Fat (Captain Sao Feng) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

Would you book passage on a doomed ship if you knew Johnny Depp, Keira Knightley, and Orlando Bloom would be along for the ride?

Millions of moviegoers will say "yes" and climb aboard for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, the conclusion of Disney's pirate trilogy. Some will even go in hats, dreadlocks, and heavy eyeliner, cheering for their favorite scallywags. And they'll reward director Gore Verbinski and company with enough treasure to fund another whole franchise.

But that may be fool's gold they're spending. Not even a dozen Captain Jack Sparrows can save this overstuffed ship from sinking. If less really is more, Verbinski must have missed the memo. (In last summer's Dead Man's Chest, he proved that excess can be a good thing; it's hard to have too much fun with slapstick sequences as inspired as those. But here, it's just chaotic action, a lot of shooting and swordplay without character development to give it gravity.)

If you choose to join this rowdy cruise, plan to purchase a couple of meals' worth of popcorn and soda. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End packs more characters, more action, more surprises, and more metaphysical nonsense into 168 minutes—yes, that's right, almost three hours—than most adventure trilogies contain in their whole series. (I know, I recently said the same thing about Spider-Man 3. But trust me: At World's End makes that movie look as simple as a Saturday morning cartoon.) And you'll have to sit through twelve minutes of closing credits to see the movie's predictable epilogue. But most moviegoers will have already walked the plank, emerging seasick, full of strange tales, and drunk on plot-twists, double-crosses, and baffling revelations.

Elizabeth (Keira Knightley) and Captain Jack (Johnny Depp)

Wait—I take back what I said about popcorn. Verbinski and the effects team work overtime to spoil your appetite. The previous Pirates movies have shown a flair for the grotesque, and this time, they pull out all the stops. In fact, they dismember them. Characters have a troubling tendency to snap off digits, gouge out eyes (and suck on them), rip brains out of craniums (and lick them), and yank out beating hearts (and maybe even stab them). It's like touring the popular "Bodies" exhibit (featured in Casino Royale), only to see the corpses come to life and dissect themselves.

And the film's mad revelry in violence reaches troubling extremes. After the opening scene of a child being hanged, impalings and shootings come at a dizzying rate.

You'll notice I haven't summarized the story yet. That's because it would take hours to diagram the crisscrossing currents of this narrative. Screenwriters Ted Elliott and Ted Rossio fail to rekindle the chemistry of the characters in Dead Man's Curse, and their turbulent pacing sinks the storyline's coherence rather spectacularly. We're left flailing about, grasping at pieces of the narrative's wreckage, while it all eventually goes down in a whirlpool of chaotic action as powerful as the Charybdis.

Here's a sketchy summary:

Manifesting the world's greatest evil—a corporation—the malevolent Lord Beckett (Tom Hollander) has obtained the still-beating heart of Davy Jones (Bill Nighy). In doing so, he's gained control of the fearsome, barnacle-skinned crew of Jones' ship, The Flying Dutchman. With this advantage, Beckett plans to cleanse the world of pirates.

Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) and Will (Orlando Bloom)

Thus, our "heroes"—Will Turner (Orlando Bloom), Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley), the recently resurrected Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush), and the mysterious Tia Dalma (Naomie Harris)—set out to rescue their only hope: that rascal, Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp).

Sounds like another famous third episode? Replace Jabba the Hutt with Chow Yun-Fat, and you've got the idea. Barbossa, Elizabeth, and Will must outwit Captain Sao Feng (Yun-Fat), a Chinese pirate, in order to free Jack from his underworld purgatory. Verbinski even pays tribute to poor Princess Leia, as Elizabeth is stripped to her skivvies. ("More steam," demands Sao Feng, but I think those were stage directions.)

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