Yo Ho Hum

Allow me to be the first to ruin your holiday weekend movie-going plans. Sadly, the third "Pirates of the Caribbean" installment is a disappointing mess. The only way you will walk out of the theater feeling like it was worth your time is if someone is paying you by the hour to watch it. (It's three hours long.) Much of the movie feels familiar--I swear it was cobbled together from the cutting-room floor sweepings after the first two "Pirates." The plot makes absolutely no sense. In fact, if anyone does see it, and can explain it so that it does makes sense, I'll give them a box of Fiddle Faddle. We've already seen Davey Jones and the "fish" people, so even those bits of movie magic fail to surprise and delight this time around. The only new element is a running joke where Capt. Jack hallucinates (and interacts with) multiples of himself. It's kind of funny, at first, but mostly just weird. The film is rated PG-13 for a reason. I would not take young kids to it. The strange blend of campy humor and cartoonish violence tends to dilute the impact of the violence, and not in a good way. The movie opens with the hanging of a young child and gets frequently more graphic and gross. That said, it's not the worst movie I've ever seen--it has a few good moments-- and I did manage to get a little misty-eyed in the next-to-the last scene. Lest we forget, though, this is a movie franchise based on a theme park ride and I'm just not sure there were enough stories to go around between the original film and two sequels. Disney needs to keep that in mind if they decide to do "It's a Small World, The Movie."