PIRATES 2! I saw it today, even though I'm nursing a nasty sprained ankle from falling down the stairs in front of our apartment (they were wet...and super slippery...and I was not in a great mood.) Nevertheless, I rented some crutches (yeah, I didn't know you could rent crutches either, but not too shabby) and hopped to the theater to see this. Every show was getting sold out by the minute, and I think our theater, sold out of tickets to Pirates for the whole evening by 5:30pm! And they were showing it hourly, in like 3 or 4 theaters! Talk about making a killing...anyways, here's my two cents...

Here be spoilers, you are warned!

The movie took a little bit to get into. Maybe I should have watched the first Pirates again to refresh myself as to what was going down with the 3 main characters and their hangups and quirks, but once it got rolling, it really got rolling...

Starting out with the failed wedding of Will and Elizabeth, the setup is that they're both thrown in jail, but evil behind the scenes bad guy (I don't remember his name, but I doubt that was important) from East India Company offers Will a way to be pardoned of all his charges - IF he gets Jack Sparrow's compass. So many questions I had, at this point...why does this guy know about Jack's compass, doesn't the compass just lead to the Aztec gold, why does snivelly East India Company evil guy remind me of a wrinkly scarred Kenneth Lay (maybe it WAS him...he faked his death through Enron to become evil guy in Pirates 2!)

Capt. Jack Sparrow is as weird as ever, definitely making me ask myself...is he just pure campy weird or pure genius? I guess a little of both, as he is as likeable in this movie as he was in the first. He gets a warning from Bootstrap Bill, Will's dad, that Davey Jones is out to get back his debt that Jack owes him. The setup is done!

Things go crazy as we go to a cannibal island, where Jack is going to have the God roasted out of him, and Will is stuck in a big Ikea willow decorative ball, except the ball is made out of bones instead of willow sticks (that'd be an AWESOME addition to the IKEA collection, by the way...Decorative ball made from the bones of scandinavian children who made this cheap IKEA stuff! Okay, maybe not..) We meet Davey Jones and his crew, with some of the greatest visual effects money can buy, and every penny they paid was well worth it...I couldn't tell where the actors ended and where the CG started. And I usually notice that, being a nitpicky art student.

There were some GREAT references to the original ride, and the Monkey Island game series, especially with the visiting of The voodoo lady with bad teeth and a great Jamacian accent. Kraken, the monster that destroyed any ship Davey Jones ordered it to destroy, was awesome, a great foe. AMAZING fight sequences (especially with that 3 way swordfight and the waterwheel!). And what a great reveal at the end with Barbossa!

What didn't I like? I guess I didn't laugh as much as I did in the first movie. This movie was going for action all the way, and not that I didn't like it, but I guess I expected to laugh more. I'm indifferent towards Keira Knightly's character, yeah she had to deal with stuff but her teeth that don't allow her to close her mouth kinda got on my nerves. She wasn't horrible though, I mean, did anyone see Domino? Now that was horrible. I'm stretching to think of things I blaringly didn't like, and for movies like these, that really just promise fun and adventure, I let a lot of things slide.

All in all, a great summer movie. Now I gotta wait until freakin' Memorial Day of next year to see the next one?