So by now you’ve probably already seen my grade and you’re thinking, “alright Joel seriously needs to reconsider his movie priorities, because I heard that Pirates 3 royally sucked.”
Whether or not your actually thinking that has no effect on the review, but if you’d grant me all of the five minutes it takes to read my ramblings you’ll see that this movie is a little different than most for a number of reasons, and while I’ve graded it highly, I can more or less help you predict what you would grade it if you were to see it.
It’s important to recognize a couple key things about this movie. First and foremost it’s a summer movie, which may not give it license to be horrible, but it does mean that they can lower the amount of deep intellectual issues and up the amount of great special effects.
Also important to remember is that we’re talking about the sequel, to the sequel of a movie based on a ten minute Disneyland ride. I for one had lower than the worst of expectations for the first film in this series, and perhaps that was why when I saw it I liked it so much. The plot was very well thought out, the script was funny, and Johnny Depp went from indie favorite to international superstar thanks to the infamous Captain Jack Sparrow.
The last, and arguably most important thing, to remember is the plot of Pirates 2. I hadn’t watched it since the theaters and I admit there were a couple times in this one when I had to do some serious thinking to recollect which characters were with which others, what they were after, which other characters they knew and/or had attempted to kill, imprison, or marry.
Pirates 3 gives absolutely no wiggle room for the people who don’t remember the previous movie’s plot, it picks up where it left off and continues to twist and convolute the story until it is virtually unrecognizable. I, for one, didn’t think this was a bad thing. I may just willingly watch “Transformers” (the cinematic equivalent of suicide) before I bemoan a summer theme park ride third installment for having too much plot, seriously.
Though it was tricky in a couple spots, I managed to keep the plots more or less in order and saw the whole story arc for what it was by the time the credits rolled. I’m not all together that bright so I’m thinking, if I can do it, so can anyone else. Except kids perhaps, but I don’t know how much of a little kids movie this is, considering the noticeable higher number of rather graphic violence, for a PG-13, and sexual innuendoes.
I’ll not even begin to tell you the story, except to say that it follows all the characters from the first two, as well as many more who are introduced, as they travel through The Arctic, Purgatory, Singapore, and of course the Caribbean, in a large scale clash between pirates and the government of Great Britain.
Here’s the part that will, perhaps, help you decide if this is the movie for you. More or less, in movie franchises as in math, two points define a line. This sounds sketchy, I’m sure, and indeed there are examples of this system not working, but it works here. I really liked the first Pirates, I’d even go so far as to say I loved it, it was a shameless piece of pop culture but who cares. As I listed before, it had many strong qualities.
The second one, I thought, was also a great movie. I thought it expanded the story and the characters and was engaging and all that good stuff. I gave it a solid A because it was as fine a sample of big budget summer thrills as movie goers are likely to find. Some people didn’t like it as much.
Now the way it works is this. For the people who gave Pirates 1 an A, and Pirates 2 a B, they would be most likely to give Pirates 3 a C, on account of the fact that it continues in the same vein of plot changes and developments that those movie goers might not have liked.
I know this is like the most ridiculous little system ever, but I think it’s true. If the first had an A, and the second had a C, than the third would most likely receive an F. It’s like those IQ tests where they ask you what comes next in the sequence.
You mustn’t think that I grade Pirates 3 as I do merely because it follows a pattern; it just works out that way because of the nature of the movies. Pirates 3 wraps up all the stories, in ways I couldn’t have predicted, and with the exception of two absolutely cornball scenes that ought to have been cut, as well as the presence of Orlando Bloom (a blemish on any movie no matter how good), I had an absolutely smashing time watching this movie.
The novelty has worn off, but the adventurous scope of the movie is still there. Johnny Depp, Bill Nighy, and this movie’s greatest attribute Geoffrey Rush, are all excellent in their roles, and the supporting characters are colorful and fun as usual. The action scenes are still generously enhanced with comedic mayhem, and the movie maintains the sense that it’s sort of making fun of itself as it goes along.
If you hated the first, and/or the second, don’t see the third because you won’t like it. I loved both predecessors, and call me shallow, easy to please, or sleep deprived (that one even I won’t deny), I loved it all the third time around.

A