Kills Me Dead

1. Overuse of old jokes — Everyone involved with this film must have taken the “If it was funny in the first film, it will be HYSTERICAL in this one” drug early on in the process, and I daresay it didn’t work nearly as well as they wanted it to.
   • Rum jokes? Check.
   • Elizabeth faux passing out? Check.
   • Overly intricate sword fight on a moving object? Check.
   • Random Tortugan women slapping men (by proxy) who deserve it? Check.

   I’m sure I’m forgetting some, but you get the idea. It didn’t grate on my nerves so much as was just really, really obvious. New tactics, please. I think what irked me most about it was that it screamed “this is a sequel, this is a sequel” rather than “this is a prequel for next year.”

2. Johnny Depp is still swashbucklingly hot. This is probably not news to anyone.
3. Stellan Skarsgård — WHY DIDN’T ANYONE TELL ME HE WAS IN THIS? Gah. Skarsgård has slowly become my favourite “That Guy”, i.e. the dude who shows up everywhere in every movie who people don’t know by name, only by face (or in this case by voice). You know, what Gary Oldman is to most people. *weeps* But I loved how as the length of Bootstrap’s servitude lengthened, he got more and more barnacales and marine growths on his person. Awesome.
4. Norrington — COMMODORE! He was a pleasant surprise, and I love that he ended up with the pigs at one point.
5. Threesome-way Swordfight — May have been the greatest choreographed sword fight ever, despite also qualifying as the most ridiculous swordfight ever.
6. Davy Jones — Kids, don’t buy souls; become an undead mariner and people give them to you for free! Really, though, that was one fantastic organ and when Jack called him a “slimy git” I nearly died.
7. Just so I’m not on crack, the woman Davy Jones loved was the Mystical Rainforest Woman who gave Jack the jar of dirt, right?
8. Five bucks says “oh bugger” becomes the new “savvy”, i.e. the word Jack only utters once or twice in the film that fandom thinks he ends every sentence with.
9. I wish Orlando Bloom would just go away.
10. Things that are awesome #1: having the same name as the heroine and hearing Cap’n Jack say it.
11. Things that are awesome #2: having the same name as the heroine and hearing Cap’n Jack use endearing nicknames instead. I died when he called her “Lizzy”, omg.
12. Barbossa — Finally got his apple. More to the point, though, WTF? When Mystical Rainforest Woman was all “To find Jack, you’ll need someone who knows the ocean really well *wink wink nudge nudge*” my automatic reaction was “Who would know the ocean better than Jack Sparrow? JACK SPARROW’S DAD!!!” And for a moment I really did think when they panned up from those boots I’d see Keith Richards standing there in full piratey glory. Not to be, of course, but I had my hopes. Still, Barbossa!!
13. Did anyone else think that the Kraken looked like the giant spiky vagina Sarlacc that consumed poor sad Boba Fett in Return of the Jedi?

I don’t know. This movie was enjoyable in the way X3 was enjoyable: it’s amusing in a really mind-bogglingly stupid way. It’s not a terribly smart movie. I didn’t expect it to be, of course, and it is what it is for standard summer fare: mindlessly enjoyable but too heavily reliant on its predecessor.