Empty Vessel

Reviewed - Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest: Depp & Co hoist the jolly roger for another aquatic adventure, but are all at sea in this sequel without a plot, writes Donald Clarke.

YOU know how at social occasions - some beastly party, some filthy wedding - you can, from time to time, find yourself rescued from embarrassed small-talk by the jolliest, most talkative fellow in the room? For an hour or two his jokes and yarns keep you amused. Then, often quite suddenly, you realise this gesticulating anecdotalist is actually an empty vessel. His funny voices now grate. His quips seem annoyingly forced.

The first Pirates of the Caribbean film, for whose benefit the laboured metaphor above was constructed, managed to remain bluffly amusing for approximately 141 of its 143 minutes. The franchise's unremittingly ribald conventions are, however, spread perilously thin over this achingly lengthy sequel. Dead Man's Chest's frantic collision of slapstick, horror and ordnance suggests a parent futilely trying to cheer up a child whose hamster has just been fatally sat upon.

Consider Johnny Depp. Reprising his role as boozy Captain Jack Sparrow, the still disturbingly beautiful actor risks bursting a blood vessel in his efforts to mince, cackle and ogle his way into the audience's affections. Any sensible viewer, seeing quite how much energy Depp is expending, will begin to suspect that he is unconsciously compensating for some deficiency in the project around him.

What's missing, as so often with sequels, is a plot. This is not to say that the film is without incident. Captain Jack, who, we discover, has earlier made a Faustian pact with a squid-faced Davy Jones (Bill Nighy, good fun), gets captured by cannibals and placed upon a spit. Meanwhile, Will Turner, played by the reliably bland Orlando Bloom, has been forced by representatives of the East India Company - they have arrested his fiancee Elizabeth - to track the drunken pirate down and prise from his grasp the key to an enchanted casket.

Later, largely as a result of Sparrow's economy with the truth, Will finds himself indentured to the cephalopod Mephistopheles. Elizabeth, who, having the body of Keira Knightly, requires little corseting to pass as a boy, escapes to sea dressed in boots and trousers.

Sadly, the film-makers have not found a satisfactory structure in which to arrange these admittedly remarkable happenings. Like the cheesy theme-park ride upon which the franchise is based, Dean Man's Chest sails us past a series of mechanical set-pieces, without bothering to explain what, aside from the findings of focus groups, causes one to lead to the next. There's a sword fight on a water wheel. There's an attack by a giant sea monster. The heroes are propelled through the jungle in a sphere fashioned from human bones.

Each incident is decorated with computer graphics that look very like computer graphics; each goes on far too long; few forward the story to any significant degree.

The problem, I would guess, is that, like Back to the Future II, The Matrix Reloaded and The Two Towers, Dead Man's Chest is really just a massive holding pattern. As did those earlier films, this episode of Pirates ends - or, rather, halts - with an inconclusive teaser for the concluding part in the trilogy.

Pirates III may well be terrific, but one can't help but view Dead Man's Chest as a gigantic inhalation by that party wag as he prepares for his next, even longer anecdote.