PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN SQUIDMAN MOVIE
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN SQUIDMAN FULL
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN SQUIDMAN SERIES

Depp is a brilliantly physical performer whose finely honed movements have breathed eerie life into characters as diverse as Ed Wood and Edward Scissorhands, and whose expressive voice lent an air of melancholy magic to the animated gem Corpse Bride. The fact that Johnny Depp received an Oscar nomination for his boggle-eyed, drawl-mouthed Keith Richards' impression doesn't change my opinion that the role of Jack Sparrow has produced some of the actor's very worst work to date. When it comes to directing performances, however, Verbinski is completely at sea, leaving his rudderless cast to indulge themselves to their heart's content.

Thus we get giant-tentacled Kraken attacks, ghost ships rising from the dead, and multiple storm-riven battle scenes. Verbinski may be a witless hack, but he understands the laws of supply and demand and doesn't skimp on the money-shots. In the absence of narrative we are left with a string of 'spectacular' set pieces to hold our attention.

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN SQUIDMAN MOVIE

By the time the closing credits roll the story hasn't actually gone anywhere, and there's still a whole other movie to come. So muddled is the narrative that the characters have to keep stopping and explaining the story to each other ('You mean, if I find the chest, I will find Will Turner.

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN SQUIDMAN SERIES

The romping tone may aspire to the nostalgic swashbuckle of Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark series (replete with John Williams-lite 'ta-ran-ta-raaa' score by Hans Zimmer), but it is the rambling blather of Lucas's Star Wars prequels which is most pungently evoked.

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN SQUIDMAN FULL

Go get Jack Sparrow's magic compass! Go seek out this magic key! Go track down the Flying Dutchman! Go dig up Davy Jones's locker! Go and harvest 99 souls in three days! An early line about 'setting sail without knowing his own heading' seems to apply to the screenwriters as much as the pirates, and it's a full 40 minutes before any sense of direction is established at all. Every five minutes a new quest is announced, sending us rattling off on another tack, each more fatuously inconsequential than the last. The plot (and I use the word loosely) is episodic to the point of incoherence, constantly reminding us that this is a film franchise based upon a fairground ride. Other than that, it's boring business as usual for this second instalment in what is now a trilogy in the manner of all things post-Lord of the Rings. Which is three more things than I liked about the last one.

So that's a thumbs up for the squid, the kebab and the carbuncle. And I did laugh at one verbal gag about 'making the pleasure of your carbuncle'. There are a few moments of zany slapstick too, such as a fruit-throwing chase scene in which a skewered Captain Jack Sparrow becomes a human kebab, harking back to the days when the film's director, Gore Verbinski, made such innocuous fare as the slapstick farce MouseHunt. Reliable British actor Bill Nighy performs the human duties behind the high-tech make-up, lending an air of rancid fun to this slimy sea beast, who yo-ho-hos around the ocean accompanied by a crew of rum-sodden crustaceans. On the contrary: the digitally enhanced squid-face of villain Davy Jones (he of the locker) is very well rendered, demonstrating the wonders of CGI and motion-capture technology. G iven my contempt for the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, a triumph of turgid theme-park hackery over the art of cinema, it was assumed that I would have nothing positive to say about this sequel.

Pirates of the caribbean squidman