Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

If the words “Lesbian Spank Inferno” mean anything to you, you’ll understand precisely what’s lacking in this film. We’re reunited with the principals, Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley), Will Turner (Orlando Bloom), James Norrington (Jack Davenport) and of course, the ever-inebriated Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp). Just as soon as we see the young Swann about to be married to her beloved Will, colonial armies storm the castle, apprehending the two from crimes against the King. Oddly, the government seems to be entirely unconcerned with the valor demonstrated in the matters involving the pirate they’re accused of aiding.

The instantly loathesome Lord Beckett, Tom Hollander reflecting a bit of his narcolepsy-inducing Mr. Collins in Joe Wright’s “Pride and Prejudice,” has carried out the arrests and intends to usurp power from Governor Swann (Jonathan Pryce). But the introduction that everyone in the audience is, presumably, awaiting, comes slightly later, when a casket is thrown overboard a vessel. Captain Jack Sparrow emerges from the casket in probably the funniest moment in the entire movie. And quite honestly, from there it’s downhill with rare exception.

In this film, the squishy cephalopodic Davy Jones (played most imaginatively by Bill Nighy), Captain of the Flying Dutchman, comes after Sparrow and his reassembled crew of the Black Pearl, the vessel repatriated from the mutinous Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) in “Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl.” Now, with actors such as Nighy, Depp and, notably, Davenport, where could the sequel to the most (read: only) entertaining big-budget production in recent memory have gone wrong?

Amidst Jones hunting down Sparrow, the reintroduction of Norrington, once a Commodore now resigned, and a plot by Lord Beckett to obtain Captain Jack’s special compass (which, according to a voodoo expert, does more than previously thought), what’s lost is the chemistry of the first installment. Too much is made of Orlando Bloom’s character, who has all the personality of a bulkhead adrift at sea. An entire subplot is expended on an island inhabited by PG-13 cannibals in order to serve up absolutely Disney-ish slapstick involving the comically-gifted Depp—channeling Keaton (no, not Michael). What Disney executives seem to have forgotten is that the first film worked because it, dripping at the tongue with sexual tension between Norrington, Swann and Sparrow (anyone else notice the avian similarity between these two names?), bore almost no resemblance whatsoever to their usual corporate-machined plots and characters of Disney films past.

It’s clear that both Swann and Norrington envy Sparrow’s dextrous inhibitions, and Norrington deeply resents Sparrow for being the mechanism of interference in his suitorship of Swann, but more importantly, for the way Sparrow immasculates and reveals him for what he is—an affectation of masculinity, yet deeply insecure. This is where all the comic tension lies, and it’s too bad the film makers, the producers and the studio didn’t get it.

Sparrow’s purpose in this film, other than visual gags, is relegated to rehashing jokes from the first film. It’s as if seven Vice Presidents of Production sat in a boardroom for three days straight, without food or water, and finally their collective genius, poring over reams of test screening data, resoundingly declared with one voice, “WE NEED MORE RUM JOKES!”

An alumnus of the bitingly hilarious BBC TV series Coupling, Davenport and his comedic talents are not at all exploited in this movie, save his drunk and soiled introduction in Tortuga. His performance as Steve Taylor in Coupling is much like Norrington—good-natured yet driven to absurdity through insecurity. When I say that he isn’t introduced early enough in this film, I’m not asking for his storyline to immediately intersect Swann’s or Sparrow’s. His own story could bubble back to the surface independently, showing us how the haggard Navy Jesus (as my wife calls him; see photo above) stumbles his way back into Swann’s life. We get no such development, and it’s not the lack of backstory that concerns me. It would have been, if nothing else, an opportunity to greatly capitalize off the manic eloquence perfected by few other contemporary actors in their mid-thirties.

Davy Jones is a demonstrably creepy character, with great potential, but very little is presented regarding the unrequited love that forever cursed him. Therefore, it’s difficult to accept him as the antihero we desire to see in him. That’s unfortunate because Jones has a peculiar charisma that grows on you the more you watch Nighy at work. This may all unfold in the third installment, but I think some of the time wasted on action sequences and antics in “Dead Man’s Chest” could have been invested in setting up the Davy Jones character as the nemesis turned antihero. That opportunity can’t be revisited with Sparrow because it’s been done.

Another major subplot, barely set up but presumably shelved for part three, involves Turner’s discovery of his long-lost father, Bootstrap Bill (Stellan Skarsgaard). The barnacle-faced undead pirate serves here only as a device to bring about Will’s purpose and isn’t really a whole person—so far as we can see. Bill has the beginnings of a very tragic character, but we don’t feel much of the burden of his tragedy on the kind of level that would counterbalance the film’s goofier (pardon the pun) tendencies.

Instead of distributing the mass of the story across a well-rounded ensemble, the weight of the movie is thrust on Depp who’s given no new psychological or incidental territory to explore, and cheaply crafted one-liners that are certainly funny in and of themselves, but not as interesting to watch as the nuanced, unfolding stories Sparrow would weave in the first movie purely to charm his way out of hairy situations.

With the immense replay value of the first movie, now on DVD, one is given very little reason to care about the events or characters in this film which is a much weaker attempt at reliving the successful components of the first movie without thoughtfully constructing a follow-up that advances us forward in our knowledge and interest of the affairs of otherwise interesting characters. It’s difficult to watch sequels that try only to relive introductions, rather than advance the stories of the principals a step further. We already know the characters, and the energy of seeing them for the first time cannot be experienced again. The main characters don’t need bigger action set pieces, they need more character development to make us care when they do find themselves inevitably in peril yet again.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest • Dolby® Digital surround sound in select theatres • Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 • Running Time: 150 minutes • MPAA Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of adventure violence, including frightening images. • Distributed by Buena Vista Pictures Distribution