Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Hopefully you haven’t read your fill of reviews yet. I haven’t read any that have popped up. At first it was because I didn’t want the spoilers and then today I haven’t read Capone, Du Pont, or Harry’s reviews because I wanted to form my own review independent of any else’s opinion.

I’m assuming they loved the movie because we mostly agree and I thought the flick kicked some ass.

Let’s back up a tad, though. One paragraph of background… CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL – loved it… It was an epic studio movie based on an amusement park ride and it never should have worked, but then they went and got some amazingly talented people in front of and behind the camera, had the balls to spice it up with some crazy undead pirates genre stuff and made a killer flick.

Okay, two paragraphs… one per movie. DEAD MAN’S CHEST – artistically, an amazingly executed movie. The effects are the best ILM’s done in many years, the character of Davy Jones is fantastic, the Kraken was awesome… but they tinkered with Jack Sparrow. I didn’t like what they did to Jack. I pointed out in my review (with some insight from my buddy, Kraken – no relation) that the first flick had Jack Sparrow as a great pirate masquerading as a bumbling coward, but the second seemed to switch it up and had Sparrow as a bumbling coward masquerading as a great pirate. My main worry was that I’d continue to not dig on Sparrow, who is the glue of this franchise. Without Johnny Depp, these films wouldn’t work… with everybody else the same, it wouldn’t work.

When I sat down to watch the flick last night all that was on my mind… along with the nagging feeling that it just didn’t feel right that AT WORLD’S END was coming out this week. Disney’s been really downplaying the marketing on this, keeping it from feeling like an event to me. I guess it is smart for them to keep their marketing costs low considering it’s following so closely off of DEAD MAN’S CHEST… I’m no money expert, but this not really feeling like an event was definitely on my mind.

I was certainly excited for the movie, though. No doubt about it.

AT WORLD’S END is huge, easily bigger than the first two movies… I mean, the whole last hour is non-stop action… and good non-stop action, too. The movie seriously gets into this hyper overdrive and the pacing is incredible, switching from boat action to character duels to cannon fights to giant creatures.

That’s not to take away from the beginning and middle, though. My interest was never lost. I wouldn’t say DEAD MAN’S CHEST ever lost me, either, but it did feel its length, where this one shot like a… well, like a cannonball.

For starters, the rescue of Jack Sparrow… it’s smart, it’s funny, it’s epic. You get a feel for the difficulty of traveling between Davy Jones’ locker and the living world, which is essential in keeping the movie from becoming a bad soap opera where there’s no real penalty for dying.

And speaking of this purgatory, Davy Jones’ locker is something that’d make Terry Gilliam jump for joy (or scream in frustration that someone else did it). It’s so bizarre and stark… I actually loved this part of the movie. I don’t think the mainstream will because it is so weird and slow, but that’s exactly what I loved about it. Depp’s re-introduction is classic.

The best thing I can say about this movie is that it felt like a true continuation from the first film. The tone, the character work and the pacing is all indicative of the first movie. Every single PIRATES character you want to see more of you see more of. There’s more Jack Sparrow than you’re prepared for, all the crew get great moments and I think the best move they made was making Geoffrey Rush a main character here. I think that helps a lot with bringing the same tone from the first movie, but on a much grander, epic fantasy scale.

And God help me… this series has had both a midget and a monkey as side characters and they rock so hard in this movie… there’s a moment where the monkey is shivering… yes, cold shivering that I fucking loved. I don’t know why that scene tickled me, but there’s this whole sequence where the monkey is shivering, arms wrapped around its little body… but the scene lasts for minutes and every time the poor little bugger would end up in the background of this long scene, shivering away, I’d just crack up.

I won’t go into super spoilers, but I have to commend the last act. There are so many great things going on… great character moments, great action and a genuinely surprising finale.

I’ve heard that Gore Verbinski and Depp have agreed to come back for a fourth film. Believe me, you’ll want to see it when you finish watching this movie.

AT WORLD’S END is one third installment that lives up to the previous movies and the expectation that comes when capping a trilogy.

And it also has the best wedding I’ve ever seen on film.

It's not perfect, there are moments you can pick apart, but none of that stood in the way of me enjoying the movie. Hell, even the 60 year old man sitting next to me who decided he wanted to take notes every 4 minutes with a flashlight-strength light-pen couldn't distract me from the movie.

Cheer up, me harties. This one delivers the goods.

-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com