More Pirates.

So today marks a switchover from previews of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest to reviews. You'll probably have fun, supposes AO Scott in the New York Times, "even if it's hard to shake the feeling that you've been bullied into it."

"There's nothing so tedious as nonstop excitement," writes Salon's Stephanie Zacharek, who calls the film a "mess," and worse, "sexless."

Updated through 7/10.

"Despite his heartthrob status in real life, Orlando Bloom has consistently functioned as a node of negative energy onscreen, sucking the life force out of all who surround him," notes Slate's Dana Stevens. The Telegraph's Sukhdev Sandhu: "[I]t falls to Bill Nighy to do what he does best these days: steal the film."

The cinetrix: "DMC shares a lot of the sins of the second Indy: needlessly gruesome effects for effects' sake, a bloated cast, and a humor deficit."

Mick LaSalle in the San Francisco Chronicle: "Epics don't come about through sheer willpower, by someone deciding to make an epic and then stuffing a weak story with a lot of junk. Do that and you don't get an epic, just cinematic water torture on the order of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest."

Film Threat's Pete Vonder Haar: "It's the Empire Strikes Back of the Pirates franchise, right down to the hanging ending and the unexpected romantic angle. I'll reserve judgment on the entire series until the release of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End next year, but for now, Dead Man's Chest is a step backwards."

Mary McNamara in the Los Angeles Times on that cliffhanger ending: "Not since the days of Tom Mix have audiences been left dangling in such an extreme way."

It's "even more of a party-hearty-Marty potlatch of silliness than its predecessor," writes Michael Atkinson in the Voice: "The ingredients for a movie-movie tropical vacation are all here, including the boozy highs, the chintz, the wandering waste of time, and the hangover."

Still, "pirate shit is damn near irresistible, especially when Depp's riding the mast," finds the San Francisco Bay Guardian's Cheryl Eddy. Jeffrey Overstreet agrees: "Bursting at the seams with adventure, chase-scenes, comedy, and monsters so fantastic that Peter Jackson's gonna turn green with envy, it's making this moviegoer shout a hearty yo-ho-hallelujah."

MaryAnn Johanson's won over as well.

Scott Foundas in the LA Weekly: "You'd have to think back to The Matrix Revolutions, or maybe even Back to the Future Part II, to come up with a Hollywood sequel less satisfying than this one."

For Cynthia Fuchs, writing for PopMatters, it's "more of the same, bigger, longer, more rambunctious and generally less fun than the first time you saw it."

"The first of two sequels," writes the AV Club's Scott Tobias, "bears the unenviable burden of racking the pins for both movies, which leaves it with precious few opportunities to have a little fun of its own."

The Washington Post's Desson Thomson: "This Disney movie isn't a follow-up to 2003's Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl so much as its empty-calorie clone."

"[W]hen this sequel finally ends, it's not with a bang or whimper, but with a threat... of more," sighs Armond White in the New York Press.

More from Ray Pride at Movie City Indie, from Hollywood Bitchslappers Erik Childress, Brian Orndorf and Peter Sobczynski and from Cinematical's James Rocchi and Scott Weinberg.

Elaine Lipworth talks with Johnny Depp for the Independent.

It's pirate week at TLRHB.

Updates, 7/9: It's "boring business as usual" for the Observer's Mark Kermode. "Every five minutes a new quest is announced, sending us rattling off on another tack, each more fatuously inconsequential than the last."

"Depp lets us see his mental gears whirring (and very often clanking) before he takes action that in some way subverts everyone's expectations. You might say that he’s the anti-Errol Flynn," writes Time's Richard Schickel. Nonetheless, "as adventure yarn or as satire on that form or merely as an enjoyable entertainment featuring a wonderfully sly and subtle actor - it is not merely a loser. It is a disaster."

The AP's Greg Risling: "Preliminary estimates released by Disney show that Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest earned $55.5 million on Friday, which would set the record for the largest one-day take at the box office."

Updates, 7/10: "[T]he lack of a lean narrative line is an unexpected boon," offers David Edelstein in New York. The original "was half an hour too long (at least). This one is longer yet (two hours and 33 minutes for a pirate picture!) and has no ending (a third installment was shot simultaneously), but has so much going on that you forget about niceties like plot or suspense."

Online listening tip. The San Francisco Chronicle's Mick LaSalle revisits his own review.

Posted by dwhudson at July 7, 2006 4:13 PM