Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, the second movie in the series based on the popular Disney theme parks ride, is like that awkward middle child.
It's not as spectacularly inventive or as magical as the first film, although it has its good points with its thrills and fantastic situations.
Nevertheless, it leaves one hoping that the third Pirates film, filmed back-to-back with Dead Man's Chest, will be a little more fulfilling and, well, maybe a little shorter.
Dead Man's Chest employs a lot of characters left over from the first film who are only half remembered, but who have grown in importance this time. There also are sequences that drag on too long, as director Gore Verbinski overemphasizes some goofy slapstick moments until they're no longer so funny.
Still, it's a giant plus that the three principal characters -- Johnny Depp as fey pirate Jack Sparrow, Orlando Bloom as his sometime sidekick Will Turner, and Keira Knightley as the lovely but daring Elizabeth Swan -- are back.
However, the film might have been better served if we'd had more of Depp's Jack and less of some of the others.
Concocted as a result of the tremendous success of 2003's Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Dead Man's Chest is meant to be a bridge between the first film and the next Pirates film due next summer.
So after investing nearly 2 1/2 hours in Dead Man's Chest, one discovers by its ambiguous ending that the entire film is an elaborate set-up for the next one.
In that respect it's sort of like The Empire Strikes Back, whose purpose was to bridge Star Wars and Return of the Jedi. But some people consider Empire one of the best in the series. There's little chance of that happening to Dead Man's Chest.
Where the first film had magical qualities from its plot about a nightmare ship, the Black Pearl, which was sailed by ghostly pirates who became skeletons in the moonlight, this one has a giant sea monster called the Kraken and legendary pirate Davy Jones (Bill Nighy).
But the Kraken looks not so much like Loch Ness as it does the giant octopus from the 1955 horror fantasy, It Came From Beneath the Sea.
It surfaces occasionally to devour some hapless ship and its crew. In one instance in Dead Man's Chest the doomed ship is played by Rhode Island's state flagship, the sloop Providence. (See accompanying story.)
Like the crew of the first Pirates movie, Davy Jones and his long-dead crew have had their own curse thrust upon them. They've been turned into half-human/half-sea creatures doomed to forever sail the haunted Flying Dutchman. That scary ship rises out of the depths to lay waste to any ship that happens to be in its vicinity.
Davy's head looks more octopus than man. Writhing tentacles and icky blobs of pale flesh pulsate on his face; his hand is a crab claw. His first mate's head looks like a cross between a man and a hammerhead shark, while the rest of his crew is properly barnacle-encrusted.
This is all very imaginative and a little creepy at first, but these guys have been given way too much screen time to do their scowling and dirty work.
Dead Man's Chest revolves around Jack Sparrow's search for a missing double key that will unlock the mysterious chest buried in the sand by Davy Jones years before. Once the key is found, he must then find the location of the chest itself.
Jack carries a strange compass that allegedly will point the way to the chest and the buried treasure that everyone assumes for a long time was buried inside. Hmm, if only Jack could make that compass work.
Needless to say, Jack is not the only one searching for the key. The cruel new royal governor, who has ordered Will and Elizabeth put to death by the hangman -- on what was supposed to be their wedding day! -- for having helped Jack escape, wants Jack's compass to find the buried chest for himself.
What follows is a lot of double dealing and doublecrossing in a plot that's far too complex and filled with far too many characters than it needs to be.
Of course, there's still Depp, who is flamboyantly swish as the mincing Jack, funniest when he's prancing along running from a pack of cannibals who plan to have him as the main course for dinner.
Jack turns up in the most unlikely places and in the most unlikely guises, one time with eight eyeballs and speaking gibberish to the cannibals, who seem to understand him.
Bloom and Knightley are colorless by comparison, although they have a lot of sreen time. When Depp's not on screen, his prissy canoodling is sorely missed.
There are plenty of large-scale adventures to keep the plot rolling along, including one in which Jack's crew is imprisoned in two giant cages made of human bones hanging over a deep ravine.
But sometimes Verbinski doesn't know when to quit when he's got a good thing going. A swordfight atop a water wheel that has been torn loose and rolls across the landscape goes on too long. So does the beginning of that swordfight, which looks poorly choreographed.
Sometimes less is more and, in the case of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, too much is too much.
***
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
Starring: Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Stellan Skarsgard, Bill Nighy, Jack Davenport, Kevin R. McNally, Jonathan Pryce.
Rated: PG-13, contains violence, scary images.
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