Pirates of the Caribbean 3

RATING :: a 10-pack of White Castle sliders eaten around midnight on a car trip that come back to haunt me at a roadside rest area.

Think about this for a second...you sit down at a bountiful smorgasbord for Thanksgiving with every mouth watering piece of holiday food imaginable. You load your plate up to overflowing and sit down to consume this succulent meal, but the various dishes have poured over into each other because the plate is so full...the individual tastes that are exquisite alone are lost to the mediocre taste of the now combined elements. And although the taste is not terrible...it lacks the distinctiveness you were hoping for.

That's how I describe the latest in "Pirates of the Caribbean" series...an over bloated piece of summer film. A movie plate full of potential early that rapidly falls into an overstuffed piece of various side stories and convoluted accents which regularly dispense critical elements of the plot. Clocking in at almost 3 hours, I found myself restless and looking at my watch many times. Someone tell the writers it's OK to take away 3 of the 5 sideline stories in favor of bolstering the main.

Although the following (with my modifications) is taken from a review about the new Russian film "Daywatch", it brilliantly derives the essence of the cinematic problem with this overblown sequel:

"The worst thing Pirates has picked up is the tendency of megasequels to aggrandize material grown enervated, to compensate for thinness by spreading out. The story sporadically jerks to life, then settles back into the maudlin, distracted, or merely vacant. For an hour or so there's rhythmic excitement in these spasmodic rhythms, the weird rush of something unpredictably unhinged."

- Nathan Lee, Village Voice

If you watched the trilogy thus far from beginning to end, you would need almost 9 hours. Bless their hearts but someone break out the red pen and start slashing scenes and story lines. Every film does not need to pack in more than the previous...just make it entertaining. This series was never meant for anything else.

BTW :: I didn't wait until after the credits but there is a secret ending with an interesting twist.