Movie Brief: Pirates of the Caribbean II

We went and saw Pirates last night. Most of it was entertaining. The action scenes were very well choreographed and executed. Johnny Depp was pretty funny again. The only problem that the move didn't make any sense (which seems to be a trend lately). There were several things I didn't understand:

1) Somehow Davy Jones and his crew have become half-men/half-sea-creatures.
2) For some reason, Captain Jack owes Davy his soul.
3) Davy's heart somehow ended up in some chest.

All of these were explained during the course of the movie, but you never could really understand what the characters were saying because of background noise, unlcear speech, etc. On the way home I told Katie that I felt like an old person: "What was going on? I'm confused! I couldn't hear what they were saying!"

Now, I'm willing to accept a little confusion and a lack of internal consistency in a summer blockbuster. (Would any explanation suffice for how someone became a half-man/half-squid after cutting out his own heart?) But the most irritating thing about this movie was that, after 150 minutes of swashbuckling, they dropped an ending which was supposed to feel like a cliffhanger, but instead just felt tacked-on and confusing. It was like they were 98% done with the film, then realized that they could probably milk the franchise for another couple-hundred million dollars with a third installment.

I was trying to think of comparison's last night as far as segues between installments. Back to the Future ended with a similar last-second cliffhanger opening the door for a sequel, but it also felt like the end of a chapter. Empire Strikes back was the same way, as were both of the Lord Of The Rings segues. The closest thing I could come up with was the transition between BttF 2 and 3. BttF 2 also represented the middle link of a three movie franchise and also couldn't stand on it's own plot-wise. The difference of course being that BttF 3 came out only a few short months after 2, thereby assuaging somewhat the mediocrity of the second movie.

In summation: PotC2 is entertaining in parts, tedious and confusing by the end.