Pokémon Detective Pikachu

The Low-Down: There really is no better time for Hollywood to release its first live-action Pokémon movie. Generations of children – who are now adults with spending power – have grown up dreaming of becoming Pokémon trainers. Since their creation in the mid-1990s, the (mostly) adorable creatures known as Pokémon (‘pocket monsters’) have captured hearts and imaginations all over the world – through video-games, animated television shows, movies and more. The advent of Pokémon Go in 2016 has taken the franchise into the global mainstream, boosting its name recognition even among those who couldn’t have differentiated between a Bulbasaur and a Charmander just a few years ago. Fortunately, Detective Pikachu doesn’t come across as just a cynical cash-grab – it will delight its devoted fan base, but is also smart and charming enough to appeal to a wider audience.

The Story: Tim Goodman (Justice Smith) has lived a life as far away from his childhood dream of becoming a Pokémon trainer as you can get. Working quietly in the insurance industry, he refuses to even choose a Pokémon as his companion. One day, he receives a fateful call that brings him to Ryme City: a metropolis created by brilliant industrialist Howard Clifford (Bill Nighy), where humans and Pokémon live and work in harmony. Tim’s estranged father has gone missing, and the only clue he has left behind is Detective Pikachu (Ryan Reynolds) – whose clever insights and snarky observations can only be understood by Tim.

The Good: Detective Pikachu is a remarkably canny adaptation of Pokémon lore and legend. Fans will have a ton of fun (and might need multiple viewings) to spot all the Pokémon wandering in and out of frame – from dozing Slakoths to swooping Pidgeots, grieving Cubones and beyond. You might find yourself experiencing a sense of visceral joy at seeing these critters come to life, quite literally, and interact with actual human beings – not just on the page, or via pixels. Happily, though, the film doesn’t simply rely on fan service and affection to power through. There’s a welcome wit and warmth to much of its writing that’s impossible to resist, especially when it comes to the film’s titular electric-yellow hero – an adorable ball of energy that literally (and metaphorically) lights up the screen.

The Not-So-Good: If you’re a Pokémon neophyte, you might find yourself quite confused by audience reactions to Detective Pikachu, which don’t always match what’s happening on screen. You’ll still be able to follow the narrative fairly easily, but you’ll be lost when audience members freak out at the many Easter eggs and callbacks to decades of Pokémon canon. The film’s plotting also loses its footing towards the end, when the motivations of its main antagonist and the truth about Tim’s mysterious connection with Detective Pikachu become clear. At this point, it feels as if director Rob Letterman and his screenwriting team came up with the ending they wanted, and then reverse-engineered the rest of the film to make it work.

MVP (Most Valuable Pokémon): The answer is obviously Pikachu – a blend of brilliant character design and charismatic voice/facial-capture work by Reynolds. But one of the greatest joys of Detective Pikachu is that it doesn’t simply provide a showcase for Pikachu, already one of the most beloved of all Pokémon. Psyduck – a frazzled duck perpetually on the verge of combusting from stress – walks a fine line between hilarious and helpful. Even Mr. Mime, easily one of the weirdest and creepiest Pokémon ever created, gets a moment to shine – and in the kind of scene that’s so blissfully weird and silly that you can’t help but appreciate what the filmmakers are trying to do, even if they don’t always succeed.

Recommended? Yes. Detective Pikachu could have raked in the cash through brand loyalty alone. But the film is evidently the product of a great deal of love and care. Flawed as it is, this thoughtful re-imagining of the Pokémon franchise is fun, silly and charming in lots of the right ways.

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2015)

Sequels that were never meant to be are such a tricky proposition. Most of the time, they’re rushed hastily into production to cash in on a phenomenon. Almost always, they’re never as good as the original films, since happy endings have to be picked apart as the same story is labouriously told again. By all accounts, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel should be terrible. And yet, director James Madden and screenwriter Ol Parker, returning to the series after the unexpected smash-hit success of 2011’s The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, have done the impossible. This sunny sequel – though a little overstuffed plot-wise – is a shot of sweet, tender joy, its charms frequently outweighing its contrivances.

We return to Jaipur, India, to discover that the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is doing great business – so great that its eternally optimistic owner, Sonny (Dev Patel), is trying desperately to find a second site for another retirement hotel. Despite the calming efforts of perenially grumpy hotel manager Muriel (Maggie Smith), Sonny gets so caught up in it all that a wedge is driven between himself and his fiancee Sunaina (Tina Desai) as they plan for their wedding.

At the same time, the hotel residents we met in the first film are still struggling with life and love in Jaipur. Evelyn (Judi Dench) can’t quite seem to commit to a relationship with Douglas (Bill Nighy), even after he left his shrew of a wife Jean (Penelope Wilton) for her. Madge (Celia Imrie) is still dithering between suitors, whilst Norman (Ronald Pickup) tries to figure out how serious he wants his romance with Carol (Diana Hardcastle) to be. Meanwhile, Sonny is convinced that Guy (Richard Gere) and not Lavinia (Tamsin Greig) – two new residents at the Hotel – is a property scout who will determine if he can get funding for his expansion plans.

That’s a lot of story, even for an ensemble piece. It’s really the biggest problem with The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel – the film dashes breathlessly from character to character, even when some of them overstay their welcome. The sub-plot within Norman’s narrative, in which he thinks he might accidentally have taken out a hit on Carol, feels especially silly. Although a couple of nice character beats can be found in Guy’s flirtation with Mrs Kapoor (Lillete Dubey), Sonny’s mother,  it’s not given enough depth or attention to be truly effective. Greig, a wonderfully gifted comedienne, is almost completely wasted as Lavinia hovers in the background and forges a connection with Kushal (Shazad Latif), Sonny’s self-appointed nemesis.

And yet, it’s easy to forgive the screenplay when it does such a good job in juggling almost everything else that’s on its plate. The final film, packed with as much wit and heart, is a joyful jumble of stories that feels somehow appropriate, just like the messy, beautiful world in which all the characters have chosen to live. It also comes as a genuine surprise how much deeply-felt sorrow and insight Parker manages to inject into the proceedings. He finds a credible way to explore the almost-illicit connection that sprang up in the first film between Evelyn and Douglas, shading doubt and complexity into the relationship in a very credible way.  In a particularly well-handled subplot, he explores the profound wells of humanity within the ever-caustic Muriel. There’s even a moment when Jean, all prickles and insults, is offered a touch of sympathy – a hint at why she behaves in the callous, hard way she does.

It helps, of course, that this stellar cast remains eminently capable of communicating oceans of emotions in a mere handful of scenes. Nighy’s Douglas is a tender whirlwind of charm, albeit one who can no longer remember details without the help of an off-site prompter (a character trait that pays off in a most delightful way). Imrie lends weight to the flighty Madge’s romantic travails, and Wilton conjures up an entire inner life for her antagonistic character in the space of a few moments. Patel acquits himself very well alongside the veteran members of the cast, radiating good cheer in almost nuclear proportions – quite enough to carry Sonny through his more selfish, annoying moments in the film.

But The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel truly belongs to its two grande dames. Dench is powerfully convincing as a woman who’s tentative – even terrified – about all the new avenues opening up in a life she had come close to thinking was over. Although her storyline is kept deliberately in the background, Smith steals every scene she’s in, reeling off perfectly tart zingers even as she walks away with the heart and soul of the entire film. The screen, of course, lights up when they share it, trading insults and insights in equal measure.

Strictly speaking, this isn’t a great movie:  it’s plainly an attempt to cash in on the unexpected success of a surprisingly cute ensemble comedy about aging gracefully in India. Madden, Parker and their illustrious cast hit upon something quite magical in the first film; it would seem almost ridiculous to expect lightning to strike twice in the same place.  And yet, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel somehow works, and even occasionally trumps its predecessor in doling out a good share of rich laughs, local flavour and colourful charm.

Basically: There’s no second-best about it – this sequel is every bit as delightful as its predecessor.

I, Frankenstein (2014)

There’s something to be said for big, dumb blockbusters featuring immortal creatures of the undead, gargoyles, demons and a whole lot of CGI. That’s especially true now, during awards season, when the cinemas are otherwise crowded with Important Movies that might be worthy but difficult to watch. I, Frankenstein even lurches into cineplexes with a bit more credibility than is typically attached to C-grade movies: usually reliable character actors Aaron Eckhart, Miranda Otto and Bill Nighy have signed on to rain hellfire (or something) down on one another. It’s a shame, then, that the overly dour film wastes rather than benefits from their talents.

Forced into a shambling semblance of life, Victor Frankenstein’s dark, brooding creation (Eckhart) stalks bitterly through the centuries. He’s hunted mercilessly by the forces of evil – flame-streaked demons led by the nefarious Prince Naberius (Nighy). On the side of good are the gargoyles, a peaceable clan who enjoy the blessing of the heavens and are led by the beautiful Queen Leonore (Otto). Bequeathed the name of Adam by Leonore, Frankenstein’s creature soon discovers that he is the factor that could tip the scales in the immortal battle between the demons and the gargoyles.

I, Frankenstein is entirely too grim for its own good. Kevin Grevioux’s screenplay, adapted from his graphic novel of the same title, marches forward in workmanlike fashion. Plot ‘twists’ can be seen coming from miles away – see the sassy blonde scientist (Yvonne Strahovski) directed to investigate Adam’s origins grow increasingly fascinated with her science project! There are precious few shades of complexity to be found in the film, the characters never really breaking free of their archetypes – beyond the fact that the good guys morph into huge, stony, winged gargoyles that aren’t particularly pleasing to the eye. Fiery explosions and bone-crunching battles abound, but they never amount to very much in emotional terms.

The unexpectedly good cast liven things up a little, though not by enough to drag I, Frankenstein out of the doldrums. Eckhart storms stoically through the film, a singular grave expression carved into his features like so much rigor mortis. Nighy seems to be having fun even while phoning in his performance. As for Otto and Strahovski, both actresses are competent but largely colourless in their roles.

Genre flicks like this one don’t usually have to check a lot of boxes to be fun nights out at the cinema. The Underworld franchise – from the same producers – proved just that, spinning its surprisingly rich tale into four films that haven’t been critically successful but have nevertheless cultivated their own fans. On the strength (or lack thereof) of the gloomy, predictable I, Frankenstein, it seems unlikely that it will kickstart a new franchise in quite the same way.

Basically: Dead on arrival.

About Time (2013)

Richard Curtis has been responsible – as a writer, director or both at once – for such beloved romantic comedies as Four Weddings And A Funeral, Notting Hill and Love Actually. It would seem to make perfect sense, then, for his newest film to be marketed in the same way: About Time, the new Richard Curtis rom-com featuring time travel! Never judge a film by its trailer or poster, though, as the saying goes, because there’s an almost startling, heartbreaking depth to About Time, which slowly reveals itself to be a story about family and love that’s only concerned in part with romance.

On his 21st birthday, awkward, gangly Tim (Domhnall Gleeson) is told by his dad (Bill Nighy) that the men in his family have a unique ability to travel in time: they can’t kill Hitler or take a tour of Renaissance Europe but, by going into a dark space and clenching their fists, they can revisit moments in their own personal timelines. When Tim meets the sweet, beautiful Mary (Rachel McAdams), he resolves to do everything in his power – including go back in time – to win her heart.

That may sound like a bit of a kooky premise, but Curtis’ execution of it – in his dual capacities as writer and director – is completely winning. In the moments when it’s very much a rom-com, About Time is deliciously romantic and sweetly hilarious. There’s an effervescent joy to Tim meeting Mary for the first time (again), just as the ways in which they fall – and stay – in love are close to magical. Curtis’ films have always used music to great effect, and here he peppers the love story with songs that will move into your heart and stay there, like Ben Folds’ The Luckiest and The Waterboys’ How Long Will I Love You.

But About Time isn’t just about a boy and a girl finding each other: it’s also about what happens after that, when romance leads to a lifetime spent together, making memories and becoming a family. Tim discovers, to his horror, that his gift cannot shield him from all the low points in life: when he starts having more to lose, the costs of doubling back on his own timeline grow ever larger. It’s a point made very effectively when Tim tries to save his beautifully quirky sister Kit-Kat (Lydia Wilson) from the heartbreak and horror that has derailed her life.

In many ways, this is Curtis’ most personal film: it folds in life lessons and insights about death, loss, family, and treasuring what’s extraordinary in even the most ordinary of lives. He seems to suggest that Tim’s gift is more of a choice: it can be used in the flashiest of ways, unravelling lives and histories in the clench of a fist, or it can be used to savour all the little things that we take for granted, all the moments that slip by in the rush and bustle of a busy day. Tim’s romance with Mary might be the selling point of the film, but it’s really his tender, emotional relationship with his dad that will stay with audience members long after the credits roll.

If there’s anything that doesn’t quite work, it’s Curtis’ deceptively simple notion of time travel. Tim’s gift is more plot device than plot point, but it still raises more than a few questions along the way. Does Tim have to re-live his entire life whenever he goes back in time? Why are only the men of the family given this odd, marvellous gift? Isn’t there something faintly worrying about men who can completely control the shape and nature of their relationships with the ladies in their lives? About Time breezes swiftly past these concerns, but they lurk disquietingly within the film anyway.

Curtis’ cast is an unmitigated marvel. Gleeson is a sweetheart, his bumbling warmth adding greatly to Tim’s gentle appeal. McAdams shines brightly in a slightly undercooked role, leaving no room for doubt that men would brave the vagaries of time travel for a chance to see her smile. (It’s fortunate that her second foray into time-crossed romance is so much more successful than the lamentable Time Traveller’s Wife.) Nighy, meanwhile, all long limbs and rumpled charm, is heartbreakingly lovely as Tim’s dad: the father who patiently teaches his son about everything that matters in life and love.

A few months ago, Curtis announced his plans to retire as a director after About Time – this would allow him, he said, to take properly to heart the film’s message about consciously choosing to enjoy one’s life in all its quiet splendour. For fans of Curtis, it’s not a complete loss, as he plans to focus on writing and producing and has, in any case, directed only three films in his career. But, on the  strengths of the sweetly devastating, unexpectedly accomplished About Time, it’s hard not to feel at least a small sense of loss in imagining what might otherwise have been.

Basically: A tiny miracle of a film that’s about so much more than time.

Jack The Giant Slayer (2013)

Fairy tales have long been a rich and wonderful source of inspiration for movie-makers. After all, the stories are familiar to audiences old and young, and the best of them promise magic, adventure, and the triumph of the human spirit over great adversity. However, a great origin story isn’t necessarily a guarantee of quality. In the past year alone, we’ve had two wildly different versions of Snow White and a cheeky, gory update of Hansel & Gretel – all of which were deemed disappointments in one way or another. Sadly, the decidely mediocre Jack The Giant Slayer isn’t going to be bucking that trend.

It is, as it should be, a familiar story: in exchange for his horse, simple, kindly farm-boy Jack (Nicholas Hoult) brings home a handful of magic beans that, unbeknownst to him, have the power to connect his world with Gantua, the homeland of the giants that’s poised treacherously between heaven and earth. Here’s the twist in the tale you might not have heard before: traitorous royal advisor Roderick (Stanley Tucci) is hoping to bring the giants back to Earth to help him steal the throne from kindly King Brahmwell (Ian McShane) and his daughter Isabelle (Eleanor Tomlinson).

This film version of Jack and his beanstalk (and no, that’s not a euphemism) had a lot going for it – a competent director (Bryan Singer), a good script doctor (Christopher McQuarrie) and an exciting supporting cast (including Ewan McGregor as Isabelle’s personal bodyguard Elmont). Its trailer hinted at a smarter, sassier revisionist take on the legend, packed with Singer’s trademark balls-out action and great character development.

The question, then, is how everything went so wrong. Tonally, Jack The Giant Slayer is a mess. At least the two Snow White films picked their approach and stuck with it – one was deadly serious from beginning to end, and the other was a silly, vaudevillian comic romp. Jack, on the other hand, wants to have its cake and eat it too. For every line or moment delivered with tongue planted firmly in cheek, there are at least three others that are painfully proper. As a result, the film winds up in a no-man’s-land of jokes that fall flat and characters who don’t convince.

Jack’s chief antagonists are the biggest victims of this oddly scattershot approach to the story and characters. Roderick is played in grand pantomime style by Tucci as a vaguely threatening, buffoonish villain, while giant antagonist General Fallon (performed in motion-capture by Bill Nighy) is inexplicably saddled with a developmentally-challenged extra head. An occasional low-brow joke is mined from the existence of this unfortunate appendage, but it certainly isn’t worth giving up the dramatic potential of an otherwise snarlingly stately villain.

There also isn’t much to be joyful about with the addition of Princess Isabelle as a love interest for Jack. The marketing campaign suggested that this princess was on an equal footing with the boy who would slay giants – but she doesn’t share or lead the story so much as get tangled up in it and spend most of her screen-time waiting helplessly to be rescued by Jack and/or Elmont.

Only McGregor and the occasional action sequence emerge from the film unscathed. The former is charmingly rakish as Elmont, straddling that tricky line between melodrama and broad comedy that even his well-seasoned co-stars can’t quite seem to handle. As for the latter: Singer has always had an eye for great action scenes, and he pulls off a pretty good final battle (even if it hinges implausibly on the most unevenly-matched game of tug-of-war ever).

Watching the film, one can’t help but wonder how Singer managed to let everything spiral just a little bit out of his control. Perhaps it’s because the film itself isn’t thoroughly bad; surely he would have noticed that at least. In fact, with simply far too little story to sustain its two-hour running time, it’s mostly watchable – just not particularly enjoyable.

Basically: More mediocre than magical.

Written for F*** Magazine

Hot Fuzz (2007)

Amusingly enough, while waiting for Hot Fuzz to start, I sat through the trailer for Die Hard 4.0 for the umpteenth time – and as Bruce Willis snarled, glowered and growled his way through two and a half minutes of explosions, cars flying through the air and stereotypically dour villains, I couldn’t help wondering if the world really needed another entry in the Die Hard franchise. Who needs another movie substituting brainless car-chases and explosions galore for a plot and good dialogue, as a macho hero (or anti-hero, as has been the fashion recently) chases down the black-and-white-and-bruised-all-over baddies? Escapist fluff, sure, but isn’t there a limit to one’s tolerance for such movies? Well, having experienced first-hand the brilliant, loony wackiness of Fuzz – a gloriously British, gloriously tongue-in-cheek spoof of action movies from Die Hard to Point Break to Bad Boys II – I’d have to say we still need the likes of Die Hard, if only to justify the existence of movies like Fuzz.

From the same brains who brought us zombie rom-com Shaun Of The Dead, Fuzz tells the story of Nick Angel (Simon Pegg), a supercop so buff and dedicated to his job that his arrest rate is 400% that of his peers. Threatened by his incredible awesomeness, his superiors ostensibly promote him to sergeant but actually take the opportunity to shunt him to Sandford, a blessedly tranquil model village that has barely seen a crime – much less a murder – in almost a decade. At first, Nick feels stifled, bored and quietly horrified by the quaint normalcy and charm of the town, even as he’s ragged relentlessly by everyone else on the town’s police force… sorry, “service”. He does manage to strike up perhaps the strongest friendship he’s made in years with his partner, the hapless, eternally cheerful Danny Butterman (Nick Frost) – bumbling son of Sandford Police Inspector Frank (Jim Broadbent) – but can’t shake the feeling that he doesn’t belong. It’s only when a string of grisly deaths erupt across Sandford, leaving the corpses of prominent local residents in the its wake, that Nick feels like he’s back in his element. He pieces together the puzzle of a sinister murderer out to hack his way to great profits and riches, even as he’s haunted by the smarmy villainy that laces the smile of local supermarket owner Simon Skinner (Timothy Dalton). Now if only Nick could convince everyone around him that he’s not just desperate to see spooks lurking in the shadows of Sandford, Best Village in England for the nth year running…

No synopsis can really do Fuzz justice – beyond the constraints of its plot (and those aren’t really constraints when writers Pegg and Edgar Wright, who also directs, twist them inside out and upside down with as much subversive joy as they do), the movie is a riot of jokes, wit, colour and relentless action scenes. Not to mention occasional bursts of blood-spattering gore, lashes of witty dialogue and complete nutcases of characters prowling the screen like so many panto villains. The movie revels in its own outright silliness, serving up a cutting parody of rural village life even as it satirises the buddy-cop action movie genre. So, at various points, you’ll get Nick chasing villains through picturesque farms and discovering a staggeringly huge weapon cache in an old man’s barn, or Nick riding vigilante-fashion on a white steed over the aged cobblestones of Sandford, machine guns strapped dashingly across his back. Mix that all up with the wonderfully funny, budding relationship between Nick and Danny, which is surprisingly real for all the tongue-in-cheek sarcasm layered into its cadences, and you get to watch Nick and Danny bonding in man-to-man chats or having a pint, interminable scenes pulsing with a self-consciously homoerotic vibe. And that’s not even to mention the ludicrously funny way in which Fuzz sends up crime movies, as the hooded murderer stalks his victims and kills them in blatantly obvious ways – for one victim, even bothering to fire up the stove to cook some bacon before the imposing house crumbles in a firestorm around him.

There are touches of admirable inventiveness in Fuzz as well – without the audience realising it, Pegg and Wright have subtly dropped clues and hints and little moments throughout the first half of the movie, and this is revealed to us in a wonderful scene in which Nick tries to prove that Skinner is the culprit. Nick lays out for Skinner, Frank, the rest of the police service and the audience a perfectly logical explanation of the latter’s motives for murdering all the people who’ve kicked the bucket since Nick arrived in Sandford – and we’re treated with freeze-cuts and jumpy edits that rewind and replay the precise moments in the film that slipped by you, barely registered, but were undoubtedly there, as proof of Nick’s case. Ah, good ol’ supercop Nick, who notices everything that the audience didn’t… guess we were too busy laughing! This cheeky inventiveness extends even to the names of the characters, from do-no-wrong (though consistently misunderstood) Angel, through to the thoroughly unfortunately-named P.I. Staker (Stephen Merchant in a cameo), a “pisstaker” who really is looking for a wandering swan – that becomes something of a leitmotif throughout the film for the Sandford police service’s incompetence – and the aptly-named, quickly slain wannabe actor Martin Blower, who certainly appears to be gay as gay can be even as he engages in an affair with fellow (equally bad) thespian Eve Draper (Lucy Punch).

The quirky characters served up by Pegg and Wright form an excellent comic core for the film – Fuzz is littered with strange characters, such as the hilariously campy Skinner (Dalton, who’s probably never been better as he oozes slimy smoothness in a villainous role so wonderfully suited for the panto stage), relentlessly skeptical and abusive detectives the Andrews Wainwright (Paddy Considine) and Cartwright (Rafe Spall), and a couple of aged, toothless dudes who speak in undecipherable mumbles that only Danny can translate for Nick. The entire village is also made up of apparently well-meaning people whose biggest crime seems to be a distinct lack of imagination, but as their secrets are peeled away and Nick comes to discover the true foundations upon which Sandford’s magic have been built, the audience should also come to appreciate the artfulness and skill with which Wright manages to introduce such a huge cast of characters and yet juggle it perfectly so that each minor character is recognisable and distinguishable from the others – essential when Nick stumbles upon the twist that makes Fuzz, aside from being a great comedy and action flick, a bizarrely entertaining mystery flick as well.

Walking away with top acting honours are Pegg and Frost. Pegg plays the steely straight man with enough gravitas to carry off his action-hero duties, while somehow incorporating enough of a sense of whimsy into the character to keep Nick the believable centre of the whacked-out mayhem that spins around him. Frost, meanwhile, gets the easier-to-please sidekick role, and practically walks off with the entire film – his Danny is a cheerful butterball of a man, almost a puppy in his enthusiasm to become a proper copper (waving his hand in a crowd of schoolchildren, he asks, in all seriousness, “Is it true that there’s a point on a man’s head where if you shoot it, it will blow up?”). Of course, when your movie also allows cameos from veteran Brit comics Martin Freeman, Steve Coogan and Bill Nighy, in an opening sequence no less!, you must be firing on all cylinders. (Oh, and in a you’ll-never-know-it-if-I-don’t-tell-you cameo, because I certainly didn’t, Cate Blanchett plays Nick’s former squeeze Jeanine!)

The movie’s brand of humour is quintessentially British – wry, cutting and oftentimes completely random and inexplicable, frequently busting out a weird/gory/sick joke for the sake of a weird/gory/sick joke (delete as applicable, or not). There’s the almost pathological obsession of the townsfolk with the gaudily golden Living Statue (Graham Low), who plagues the village square, or Skinner’s stupidly bumbling, aptly-named bouncer Michael Armstrong (Rory McCann) who can only say “Yarp” in affirmation and, when Nick tries to imitate his slow cadence, “Norp”. The humour is even there in the little touches – for instance, the way in which affection and, finally, acceptance, is demonstrated in the local police station, by the cheerful lobbing of a metal garbage can against one’s noggin. Lovely. The final revelation that completely upsets all of Nick’s expectations is stubbornly strange, and howlingly funny too, though I won’t spoil it here. Suffice it to say that the Greek chorus that accompanies these revelations – especially how they all make some kind of warped, crazy sense – is practically worth the price of entry alone.

You might think that, with all this wackiness going on, Fuzz forgets to be an action movie. Well, don’t worry about that – the last third appears to be Wright’s attempt to fuse about ten high-octane explosions into one, moving from fast-paced foot-races through lush English countryside, to enormous shootouts across and through the town square, as Nick dispatches his foes with gunpower, squealing tires and sunglasses. The one niggling problem I might have with Fuzz is that, in its extended action-packed denouement, the movie flags somewhat and loses just a little of the comic steam that powered it so quickly through its two-hour running time. (Rest assured that, zipping by as quickly as it does, Fuzz doesn’t feel anywhere close to two hours long.) But this is amply compensated for in a simultaneously hilarious and horrific showdown between Skinner and Nick – just as you think the former has died, in possibly the most painful way imaginable, he comes back to life. And all I can say in that instance is ‘yowch’ – but in a good way.

Loopy, bizarre, action-packed and proud of it, Fuzz is surely on top of the list of contenders for funniest movie of the year. The jokes, smart and lowbrow and weird, zip by at such a quick pace that it’s unlikely you’d have caught all of them on a first viewing. And that’s partly what the second, and the third, and the fourth viewings, and many more besides, are for – although, and this is to Fuzz‘s infinite credit, you’re watching it as much for the humour as you are for the painstaking originality and hard work that went into creating something quite so unrelentlessly entertaining. If only all action movies could be this enjoyable, this consciously tongue-in-cheek, and, yes, at the bottom of it all, smart.

Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World’s End (2007)

So here’s me last year, jaw dropped at the end of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest – deeply frustrated at the ridiculous cliffhanger the movie had ended on, but also hoping against hope that they’d find some way to wrap the trilogy up in a way that did some – any – kind of justice to the original, and still the best, movie, Curse of the Black Pearl. Well, it’s been a long wait and I’ve finally seen At World’s End – and much as I did actually enjoy it (really, I did!), all things considered, I can quite honestly say that it’s crystal clear now that no one involved in the making of Pearl had any clue they’d be forced to cobble together another six hours worth of movie just to get all those cash registers a-ringing with drooling Johnny Depp fans eager to see their pirate-hero swagger back into the cinemas.

From where we left off: the delightfully loopy Captain Jack (Depp) has been spirited away by the kraken and is busy arguing with myriad versions of himself at, well, World’s End. Estranged lovers Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) set out to rescue their erstwhile buddy, even though Will really just wants to save his dad Bootstrap Bill (Stellan Skarsgard) from the nefarious slime of the Flying Dutchman, ship of oceanic menace and lovesick fool Davy Jones (the ententacled Bill Nighy). Working with a newly resurrected Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) and the mysterious, slightly witchy Tia Dalma (Naomie Harris), the intrepid crew braves pirate-lord Sao Feng (Chow Yun-Fat) in Singapore, freezing Arctic temperatures and, finally, a completely zonked-out Captain Jack in the flesh. The ostensible goal is to restore both Jack and Barbossa so they can meet with their pirate brethren – the other seven pirate lords who each possess one of the mystical pieces of eight once used to bind the sea-goddess Calypso in human form. They have to head off the really cut-throat Lord Cutler Beckett (Tom Hollander), whose East India Company is hellbent on ridding the oceans of pirates and has Davy Jones’ beating heart as ransom. As pretty much everyone in the movie converges on Shipwreck Cove, each with their own secrets and ambitions, AWE explodes in every direction with breath-taking action scenes, occasionally sparklingly funny dialogue, and a plot that makes less sense the longer you think about it…

There’s no way to synopsise a movie like this one, really – I guess I should have realised this going in, since DMC made relatively little sense in and of itself and I shouldn’t have expected or hoped that AWE would be any much more illuminating. In fact, it’s more than happy to confuse matters even further. For the most part, and I’m not sure how director Gore Verbinski manages this, the movie chugs along on its own head of steam, appearing fairly understandable even as the myriad plotlines unfurl and twist around each other and basically get so tangled you can’t ever be quite sure, in retrospect, whether you understood it in the first place. That Verbinski somehow steers the script written by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio towards something that approximates coherence is a feat in itself, especially after having read all those stories about how filming on AWE started without a completed script.

But, all this being said, the apparent lucidity doesn’t mean that, ultimately, the movie’s plot really hangs together – Verbinski just made it seem like it does. Most frustrating is the largely unresolved storyline involving Davy Jones and his lost love: I had high hopes that they’d be able to make something of this, especially in a touching scene between Davy and the object of his frustrated affection that finally gives Nighy some screen-time unencumbered by CGI tentacles. Nighy, to his credit, is enough of an actor to pour a lifetime’s disappointment and resentment and, yes, love, into the few seconds when his human face is on display, as the physical signs of his curdled heart are too briefly melted away. But, unfortunately, as events swirl to a climax, this storyline annoyingly tapers off into nothing – the promised wrath of Davy’s spurned lover petering off into so much etheral sea-foam. Someone suggested to me that they might be setting this up for a fourth Pirates installment – which is possible, but it would be a cop-out and deeply unsatisfying if so.

Because the movie’s messy plot is littered with so many characters and ideas, other developments frequently go the same way – unexplained or simply assumed to be the case. The movie’s mostly breakneck speed, hopping along at a quick clip through most of its 170-minute running time, means that the audience just goes with the flow. But it’s frustrating to anyone who’s a fan of the characters as they were originally introduced: at that point in time, all of them were breaths of fresh air, with the apparently morally reprehensible and yet always oddly honourable Jack leading a motley crew of charming, quirky, completely random folk. Suddenly, we’re confronted with a Jack deadly keen on sailing the seas forevermore, a Barbossa who too easily forgets his enmity with Jack (although we do get quite a few delightful scenes exploring the hilarious, snark-laced friction between them), and a sort-of-broken-up couple in the form of Will and Elizabeth whose estrangement seems an afterthought in the larger scheme of things. Don’t even get me started on how the battle finally winds down to an ending: Beckett’s motivation and characterisation is particularly poor in this instance, as is the way in which his crew and, ultimately, fleet responds to what happens to him.

So yes, there is a lot going against one enjoying AWE. And I haven’t even mentioned how angry you could easily get when you realise there wasn’t much of a point to DMC being made at all – they could have spliced both movies together in a leaner, meaner cut that would probably have made more sense and been a far better film. Yes, AWE, in many ways, actually makes DMC redundant – a travesty if ever there was one, since middle installments of trilogies, having neither a real beginning nor end, as a rule already fare less well in terms of critical appeal than their respective bookends. But the last thing they should be is pointless. Oh, I’d hazard to say there are some confusing parts if you haven’t watched DMC – but I saw this with a friend who hadn’t seen the second movie and yet managed to follow the story with, I suspect, hardly any trouble. Of course, it’s possible also to argue that AWE‘s plot was so convoluted anyway that it didn’t matter whether you’d seen DMC or not – especially since what transpires in the former seems to contradict what we were told in the latter.

So why three stars, you ask? Well, as already mentioned, Verbinski does a truly marvellous job of hiding the movie’s flaws in plain sight – they’re all right there, to be criticised, but you just don’t notice them, or really care all that much about them, until you’re out of the cinema. When you’re actually watching the movie, Verbinski works mighty hard to ensure that you’ll be always, constantly entertained. And in that, he succeeds in spades. The movie’s sprawling sets (Singapore as fishing village) and awesome set-pieces (the Black Pearl and Flying Dutchman locked in a watery battle to the death in a sinkhole several leagues large) are some of the best, most jaw-dropping eye-candy ever put on screen. As the ships slide into battle with each other, and pirates swing from ship to ship with merry abandon, or as Davy Jones’ decidely fishy crew bounds among humans, the spectacle is quite something to behold. You can’t accuse Verbinski of having made an ugly film: whether it’s the light-drenched psychological meanderings of Jack at the beginning of the film, followed as he is by a thousand little rock-crabs, or the gloom-soaked scenes of ships being tossed among the waves as they struggle to fight off Beckett’s Armada… it’s all gorgeous, gorgeous stuff.

Somewhere around the halfway mark of DMC just under a year ago, I also gave up on the possibility that these two sequels would in any way approach the lighthearted genius of Pearl. And when you go in expecting little more than a summer blockbuster, there really is a great deal to enjoy in AWE. The movie is peppered through with some of the random dialogue and moments that made Pearl such a treat to watch: mostly involving good ol’ Captain Jack spouting off another wry, half-drunk one-liner that’s as loopy as it is cuttingly real. Again, it becomes clear that this is a franchise built on the strength of Depp’s characterisation of Jack: he made the first movie what it was, kept the second from expiring beneath the weight of its retrospective redundance (ha, alliteration), and again breathes immeasurable life into the third as he lopes from scene to scene scheming, double-crossing, thieving, and basically doing everything you’d hope Captain Jack would do. Without the sheer magnetism that oozes from pretty much every iota of Depp’s body and face, there’s no doubt that Pirates would have been a franchise literally dead in the water upon arrival. With him, Verbinski has managed to squeeze a six-hour-long drop of blood out of a stone.

Thankfully, there’s more fun to be had elsewhere, too. Rush makes a thoroughly welcome return as the pompous, power-hungry Barbossa; more than anyone else in the cast, he is in every way Depp’s equal, as he struts, postures and growls his way through their arguments over who captains the ship (“They be my charts!” “That makes you Chart-man!”), or as he shepherds a reluctant crew to rescue a man not many are convinced needs to or should be rescued. Some cameos work better than others – Keith Richards as Jack’s tipsily powerful daddy works a treat, whereas Chow, despite being heavily featured in the publicity for AWE, gives a mannered, shouty performance that amounts to little more than a glorified cameo. Meanwhile, although the love story between Will and Elizabeth gets short shrift amidst all the other plotlines the writers had to accommodate, the way their story concludes is surprisingly affecting. That both actors have grown into their roles, with Bloom especially effecting a handsome, mature moodiness that he couldn’t conjure up even for Kingdom Of Heaven, makes for some fun moments too. The film also frequently offers up scenes that hint of the greatness that could have been, if only someone – anyone – in the editing room had been more judicious with the snipping scissors. Elizabeth’s final meetings with her father (Jonathan Pryce) and erstwhile fiance Norrington (Jack Davenport) are achingly sad in a way you wouldn’t expect from such a summery popcorn hit.

AWE is, truly, a case of writers and director trying every trick in the book to hoodwink the audience into thinking that they had always intended for Pirates to be a trilogy. You have to admire their audacity, I suppose, for concocting not one but two epic movies from the clues they mined desperately from a movie that was essentially perfect as a standalone piece. That they somehow succeeded in making not-entirely-dire movies is testament to the power and sheer appeal of Pearl and the character it first introduced to the world. I’m not sure how much more a stomach I’ve got for more Pirates-style blockbusters, but there’ll always be a place in my heart for Captain Jack Sparrow. And for catching on to that not insignificant fact, especially since I’m very much not alone in this, perhaps Verbinski, Jerry Bruckheimer et al did find something approximating hidden treasure after all.

Notes On A Scandal (2006)

Straddling in a surprisingly effective way the two genres of thriller and melodrama, Notes On A Scandal is, at its pitch-black, chilled heart, a gripping study of two characters as different as night and day, delivered largely through the masterful performances of two of the world’s best actresses operating at their prime. It’s by no means an easy movie to watch, because neither of these lead characters is particularly sympathetic – each is curiously pitiable, but also repulsive in their own ways, and watching them inflict lies and pain on each other is at times almost too stressful for the average audience member. But, for all that, it’s a rewarding, thought-provoking film about twenty times better than any of the blockbusters beginning to seep back onto the screen following the traditional Oscar rush.

Based on a novel by Zoe Heller, Notes is the story of a skewed, bizarre friendship, told through the bitter, revealing diary entries of Barbara Covett (Judi Dench). Barbara is a stern-faced, elderly history teacher, a loner among her peers… until new art teacher, golden, flighty Sheba Hart (Blanchett), floats onto the faculty. Barbara’s darkly morbid fascination with and jealous possessiveness of Sheba grows, even as she delights at insinuating herself into Sheba’s life in little ways – like being introduced into the “bourgeois bohemia” of Sheba’s family – husband Richard (Bill Nighy), who seems close to twice Sheba’s age; teenage-angsty daughter Polly (Juno Temple) and Ben (Max Lewis), the son suffering from Down’s Syndrome. But things take a turn for the twisted when Barbara discovers that the glowing, perfect Sheba has embarked on a clandestine affair with a 15-year-old student Steven (Andrew Simpson). Suddenly, Barbara has discovered a handle on Sheba, to gain a foothold in a life she’s desperate to join with her own.

A complex, intelligent exploration of obsession, lust and selfishness, the movie is almost too weighty for its own good. At points, when Barbara again does something frighteningly stalkerish (from saving a strand of Sheba’s gleaming hair to trying to seek comfort from Sheba by stroking the inside of her arm), it’s hard for the audience not to laugh… if only to relieve some of the tension built up by what has gone before. And it certainly can’t be said that director Richard Eyre is going for subtlety – if you weren’t already clued in to the fact that you’re supposed to find Barbara’s narrative a little worrying and menacing at the beginning (hard not to when Dench looks as blankly unsettling as only she can do with nary a word of dialogue), he helps you out by accompanying shots of Dench with pregnant swells of horror-movie music. Composer Philip Glass has spared no expense in creating as melodramatic a soundtrack as he can, all swirling, orchestral tension… and occasionally, it does feel a bit much in a movie already dripping with overblown emotion.

That being said, however, there remain many, many things to admire about Notes – chiefly in the unforgettable characters of the pathologically obsessive Barbara and the blithely self-absorbed Sheba. Barbara, in particular, is a disturbing portrait of a woman so haunted by her own loneliness and desires that she imagines love and destiny into a relationship that holds neither… to the extent that a smile or a mere touch thrills her to the bone and resounds like an outright proclamation of love. While she’s almost certainly quite mad (we’re given increasing signs of how Sheba is not her first target and she has, in fact, driven other women to the brink in a misguided quest for intimacy), screenwriter Patrick Marber still hands her a choice line or two about the depths of loneliness in which she is trapped, that someone like Sheba can never appreciate… and these sentiments should resonate with anyone who’s felt alone in a world that has passed you by once too often. Sheba, too, is a gloriously-realised – albeit frustrating – character. She throws away everything that should give her life meaning for trysts she tries to romanticise and rationalise (she effectively claims at one point that surely she deserves sex with a minor because she’s spent ten years of her life taking care of Ben). And so she is morally repulsive, and wrong, and yet vulnerable as her world finally crumbles down around her.

It is in no small part due to Dench and Blanchett that these roles succeed the way they do. Both sink their teeth with great gusto into the meaty parts, and prove without a doubt that there can be brilliant parts for women yet in this male-dominated industry. Dench is every inch her character, transposing her usually regal features to express the extent of Barbara’s bitterness and petty, jealous loathing. She is almost more terrifying than any straightforward movie monster you’re likely to encounter: the little old lady that no one notices is suffocating from loneliness, but holds in her grasping hands the threads of another person’s life.

Dench is more than ably matched, of course, by the incomparable Blanchett, whose incandescent beauty goes rather a long way towards creating the aura of blessed happiness around Sheba that first lodges her in Barbara’s sick heart. But Blanchett does more than look beautiful – she grounds the annoyingly shallow Sheba, with her lack of self-control and myriad poor reasons for her affair (“I don’t know!” she howls, when point-blank confronted about why she dallied with such an ‘innocent’), in a humanity that this character could too easily have lost. While you can never quite forgive Sheba for her transgression, you can identify with her at times – through the hunted, haunted look on her face when Barbara gets a little too close for comfort, or the hunger that flames in her eyes when she fails to break off her relationship with Steven.

It’s even more of a treat to have Dench and Blanchett go head to head with each other, as they bicker, chat and – in an explosive final scene as fraught with tension as anything you’ll see in a thriller this year – literally engage in a screaming, clawing brawl tainted by lies revealed and trust betrayed.

Notes may not appeal to everyone in terms of its controversial subject matter. But it remains a worthwhile, if emotionally harrowing, film to watch – buoyed as it is by two wonderfully compelling, intelligent central performances that breathe life into two of the most fascinating female characters brought to the screen in ages.

Flushed Away (2006)

Considering the dreck we’ve been getting in cinemas this year when it comes to animated films, the reasonably amusing, rather charming Flushed Away comes as a breath of fresh air. These days, it’s difficult to fault the various animated flicks being churned out by the various studios when it comes to looking good – the one thing you just can’t get away with now is anything less than lush, gorgeous visuals. The audiences simply wouldn’t stand for it. So, what sets Flushed apart is that, aside from its always stunning, meticulously-crafted claymation stylistics already put to such good use by the Aardman Studios for the Wallace & Gromit series, the movie has also appropriated the smart, rapidfire and delightfully tongue-in-cheek comedy that was so characteristic of the studio’s best output. Good thing too, because it’s this, coupled with wonderfully-realised characters, that keeps the movie’s desperately cliched plot from sinking like an anvil, as it would otherwise do.

Stop me if you haven’t heard all this before, in some other movie: Roddy (voiced by Hugh Jackman) is a posh, upper-class house rat who thinks his life – trapped as he is in a gilded cage, emerging to stage his own movie premieres and whatnot when his owners go on holiday – is the bomb. Except, of course, that he’s actually lonely and longs for companionship. He gets more than he bargained for the day the garbage disposal ejects lowlife football hooligan Sid (Shane Richie) into the mansion. Pretty soon, Roddy is ‘flushed away’ – down the john and into the sewers, where he discovers a miniature London, bustling with rats and teeming with life. Desperate to get back to his comfort zone, Roddy seeks the help of professional scavenger Rita (Kate Winslet)… and his own clumsy self-absorption aside, runs up against local heavy Toad (Ian McKellen), a diabolical amphibian bent on ridding the underworld of vermin, with the help of his own densely oblivious rodent henchmen Spike (Andy Serkis) and Whitey (Bill Nighy), and a fleet of French frogs (mime included!), led by Le Frog (Jean Reno). As Roddy continues on his adventure with Rita, he begins to realise just what he really was missing out on cooped up in that cage of his…

Yep, more clichéd the movie could not possibly be. And certainly it’s possible to methodically dismantle the movie in this fashion. The story is an age-old one, the main characters all stereotypes (from the timid protagonist who becomes a swashbuckling, occasionally accidental action hero to the dashing figure that comes to represent everything our hero never used to have), and some jokes too obvious. It’s also possible to argue that the movie’s mish-mash of humour – from burp jokes to a horrendously over-the-top villain (toad as leg of ham!) – doesn’t work all the time. Sometimes, the humour just isn’t caustic or snappy enough to trump the feeling that you’ve watching something that you’ve seen way too many times before. Moreover, although Flushed remains chucklesome throughout, there’s no denying that it lacks the belly laughs that accompanies moments and, well, movies worth remembering beyond the time you actually spend in the cinema watching them.

But that’s being too unfair on Flushed, which is, in most ways, an uplifting, sweet piece of entertainment. It’s slight, sure, but very few animated films these days are making bids for a place in the annals of movie history – just a slot at the box office. And in these terms, Flushed will do very well indeed. The aesthetics of the movie, as already mentioned, benefit greatly from the absolutely fantastic, jaw-droppingly complex animation already so well presented in the W&G series. Throw in some wonderfully-realised trips through the bowels of the sewer system, through thundering waves of roiling, glistening water, and you’ve got a pretty strong contender for best visuals of the year.

But where it also scores is in how accessible it is – though not as cannily smart as some of Pixar’s best (say, Finding Nemo or The Incredibles), Flushed really does feature some fantastic running jokes. Most notable among which would be the Greek chorus made up of immensely talented, singing slugs. Although they first appear as mere comedy fodder, squeaking slowly in annoyingly high-pitched tones when Roddy first encounters them, it soon becomes clear that they provide the soundtrack to the film – literally. There’s nothing more amusing, for instance, than having Roddy enter the stereotypical dark, forbidding setting (as he hunts for Rita and her ship The Jammy Dodger), with thestereo typical ominous, haunting music in the background that usually forms the backdrop for such moments. Only to pull back to reveal a slug whistling to the best of his ability. Hilarious. Similarly, the slugs provide a lot of comic relief by singing at key moments – whether they’re warbling along to Roddy’s lazy guitar serenade when he tries to win Rita’s trust back again, or when they croon “Lonely… I’m so lonely...” to underscore Roddy’s own sense of isolation.

Flushed is also jampacked with wonderful characters, brought to life by what is surely one of the best voice casts in a very long time. Clichéd though they might be as the leading characters in the film, both Roddy and Rita are given enough chutzpah to become something a little more – Roddy is arrogant and clumsy, while Rita’s spunk is charming rather than grating. More memorable, however, are their amphibian nemeses – in particular, the deliciously, deviously diabolical Toad. Literally popping with malignant energy, Toad is so pompous and OTT that he’s easy to hate, but very fortunately, the writers have also ensured that he remains a figure of hilariously bumbling ridicule… whether he’s cooing to his freakish hatchlings, or walking through memory lane with his photobook of his glory days as Prince Charles’ favoured pet toad. Moreover, he’s voiced by McKellen, who is clearly having such a ball of a time that his energetic performance spills right off the screen. Whether he’s rolling his Rs like the world’s biggest ham or chortling like a dastardly villain out of some bodice-ripper novel, McKellen gives one of the most fascinating, amusing performances of the year… in any type of movie. Le Frog (poncey Frenchfrog given luscious voice by the totally game Reno) is another gem of a character, the sole vaguely competent henchman surrounded by a batch of insanely incompetent, constantly pirouetting kungfu frogs.

Light? Yes. Important? Not in the longer run, no. But Flushed does brim with frothy humour, great comedic asides (like a random pirate rat who serves Roddy’s hands up with a side of fries) and fun, cute characters… and sometimes, that’s all you need to have a fun, relaxing time at the cinema.

Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006)

It’s perhaps too much to ask for lightning to strike twice in the same place. With its predecessor being such a surprisingly good summer smash, not just one of those entertaining filler movies you watch and forget instantly but actually one of the best blockbusters ever made, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest has a lot to live up to. With the same cast and crew reunited for this film – from director Gore Verbinski to stars Johnny Depp, Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom and even writers Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio – expectations pre-release were high for both DMC and the third installment in the POTC franchise (planned for a May 2007 release). Diehard fans certainly have reason to think that maybe, just maybe, this same group of insanely talented people – Depp alone shifts the balance towards genius – would again come up with movie gold through the same process of serendipitous alchemy that led to the creation of POTC: Curse of the Black Pearl. Did the intrepid filmmakers succeed?

Well, yes and no. In many ways, including Depp’s bravura performance, the hilarious set-pieces and the gorgeous special effects, DMC is very much its predecessor’s equal. It showcases in brief moments the brilliance that so liberally sparked the engine of the first film. Unfortunately, these flashes of unmitigated entertainment that so defined CotBP are in this case buried beneath a morass of exposition and non-essential scenes clearly written just for the heck of it or for the one visual gag that quickly becomes tired. DMC, in being far too long and far too self-indulgent, cramming itself full of detail and creating a convoluted new mythos that’s never satisfactorily explained, squanders a terrific premise and its story too frequently meanders into redundancy when it should be told at the quick, staccato clip of the first POTC movie.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. First, a brief synopsis (see also my review of the first movie), to help you POTC virgins out. At their rain-drenched wedding, sweethearts Will Turner (Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Knightley) are shackled and thrown into prison by the plotting Lord Beckett (Tom Hollander) of the East India Company. It soon becomes clear that Beckett’s interest in the perpetually tipsy, eternally suave Captain Jack Sparrow (Depp) isn’t merely because he wants to eradicate piracy to save merchant trade. Promising indemnity and with an evil plot all his own, Beckett sends Will after Jack to retrieve a compass that to all intents and purposes doesn’t work. Even as Will sets out on the high seas in search of his erstwhile companion, and Elizabeth breaks out of jail to conduct a separate hunt, Jack is on a quest of his own. Reminded by old friend Bootstrap Bill (Stellan Skarsgård) of a devil’s pact he made thirteen years ago, Jack must literally find the key to freeing himself from the tentacles (again, I’m afraid, literal) of the mythic Davy Jones (Bill Nighy), a half-man, half-crustacean who has the power to command the kraken, otherwise known as the ocean’s greatest monster with the ability to break a ship in two and drag it down to the inkiest, darkest depths of the sea in a matter of seconds. As all of them – including bedraggled erstwhile suitor of Elizabeth, ex-Commodore Norrington (Jack Davenport) – converge on the same treasure, the dead man’s chest of the film title, will Jack’s desire to save his own skin see him abandon not just his friendship with Will and Elizabeth, but also his beloved Black Pearl?

Now that’s a heck of a lot of story to fit into a movie, even one that runs at about 150 minutes. I haven’t even mentioned the various complicated scenes, ranging from huge action set-pieces such as the kraken demolishing ships in its wake or a complicated three-way sword fight on a giant water wheel, to an extended blowout on a godforsaken island teeming with cannibals, that spool into the narrative of this sprawling movie. Unlike CotBP, which told a surprisingly profound back story simply and effectively, there is no economy of storytelling in DMC. It’s clear that the previous movie’s box office gave producer Jerry Bruckheimer and Verbinski carte blanche to stuff pretty much everything the writers can think of into the movie – even if it’s essentially redundant to the overall plot – just because they can. The whole sequence on the cannibals’ island, for instance, is undeniably amusing and provides some glorious sight gags (two cages made of human bones swinging like skeletal pendulums between two arching cliffs, the prisoners scrabbling at weeds to gain some traction on the approaching cliff-face) and chucklesome moments (Jack’s first appearance in full-on tribal makeup, or his giant shish kebab battle with some unruly fruits far too eager to obey the laws of gravity). But it’s shockingly clear also that these moments were put into the movie just because the writers, or Verbinski, wanted to see them put onscreen. In terms of furthering the plot, the entire island sequence does very little indeed – you keep wondering where it will lead, only to realise that it doesn’t go anywhere or have greater meaning, and actually distracts from the movie’s far more involving (but also far more confusing) second half as the plot explodes in every direction and the cannibals are quickly, rightfully forgotten.

Once we move into the mythos proper, with the introduction of Davy Jones and his eternally-cursed, scurvy crew of wonderfully-CGI-rendered giant barnacles (basically!), including a second mate with the head of a hammerhead shark, the tone of the movie shifts as well, from the blithely giddy joy of the comedy cannibals, to a darker exploration of all the characters we know so well. In terms of the film’s aesthetics, this works a treat. The sunshiny palette used for the first half of the film is pretty and cheery, but where Verbinski really excels is in filming Davy Jones’ hulking, rain-soaked ghost hull of a ship, that fittingly seems to be made of bones and slime and everything aged pulled from a sea bed no human could possibly reach. Whatever money was poured into the special effects that brought Davy Jones and his crew to life was worth it too – Davy Jones, in particular, is a masterpiece of seamlessly rendered CGI, a hulking mass of living tentacles curling off Nighy’s face, all of them moving as if they had lives and minds of their own.

In terms of actual story, there’s almost too much for anyone but the most ardent POTC fan to take in. Sprawling and a little too self-indulgent, everything and the kitchen sink is rammed in here: we have Jack’s quest to undo a deal with the devil, the mystery that surrounds said devil and his dead man’s chest, the curse of Davy Jones’ crew, including Will’s father Bootstrap, Will setting out to save Elizabeth and deciding to rescue his father instead… and that’s leaving out the tough choices Elizabeth herself must make in her desire to save Will from Jack’s bad influence, Norrington’s descent into renegade piracy, the intrusion of Lord Beckett and the appearance of mysterious prophet-witch Tia Dalma (Naomie Harris). The story is coherent, just about, although it’s pretty taxing and makes for frustratingly garbled viewing to have all this plot rammed into the latter half of the movie. Plot holes and little stupid points rear their heads everywhere, the most notable being a scene in which Will tries to nick something from a sleeping Davy Jones. Who falls asleep at the piano anyway? And what self-respecting villain sleeps the sleep of the dead when they’re not really, you know, dead?!

As I’ve already said, much of the first hour or so is redundant, and could have been told far more economically. Unless the writers thought that this actually set up the three main characters for people who’ve never seen the first movie – but even that I find strange and mostly unnecessary, since the delight of Jack Sparrow is that he pretty much explains himself the moment Depp swans onscreen, Elizabeth’s emoting only comes later and Will has always been mostly an empty cipher of a character. The character development for all three only kicks in midway through – as each gets more desperate, Jack and Elizabeth display ruthless streaks (and tantalisingly, a hint of an attraction for each other) previously unshown, while Will grows a spine of steel in a memorable face-off with Davy Jones over a game of dice. In any case, if they were so keen on introducing all the characters again to pick up new fans for the franchise, they didn’t do half a good job of setting up the ending – either a cracker of a finale and a great springboard for Episode 3 next May if you’re a fan, or it’s a thoroughly frustrating puzzle for new viewers who were probably lost about a hundred minutes back anyway.

For all the problems I’ve pointed out that lurk beneath the glossy, lovely surface of DMC, there are still a few reasons I’m holding out for a return to form in the next installment. Largely because the cast – by which I mean Depp – is on fine form. He again creates a piss-take of a character, a drunken sailor hung up on rum and saving his own sorry arse, and somehow manages to make him both tipsy caricature and real human being at the same time. Now that’s a tall order, but whenever Depp sashays across the screen, he recalls the brilliance that made CotBP such a joy to watch. Whether he’s blinking with another set of blue eyes painted on his eyelids, falling off a cliff like a typically pathetic Looney Tunes character, or just plain annoying the hell out of Elizabeth by tricking her into using his compass, Jack is as full of cheeky guile as ever… just of a slightly darker bent given the life-and-death quest he’s on.

Same goes for the two main characters, and it’s great that Knightley and Bloom both step up to the plate and deliver quietly angsty performances that anchor the movie’s more dramatic moments and prevent them from tipping over into the realm of cheese. Nighy, unfortunately, doesn’t get much chance to show off his acting chops from behind his mask of tentacles, since any real acting would come from his eyes and Verbinski doesn’t afford him enough close-ups to really impress. This does mean that Davy Jones is more a straightforwardly menacing character than even creepy ol’ Captain Barbossa of CotBP was… which makes him more a movie monster than a villain with motivations you can identify with.

Hopefully, this will be rectified in the next movie – which, if nothing else, fans will be looking forward to for some closure from having had to suffer through what must be one of the most frustrating cliffhangers in movie history. I know what the filmmakers meant when they said they were making a huge five-hour movie, and splitting it in two… certainly the sense you get of being left hanging in the air after watching DMC is not entirely palatable, and could alienate quite a few in the audience. But it does also generate considerable excitement for the next movie. For all its flaws, of which there are (regretfully) plenty, DMC does somehow manage to marshall its resources and returning cast and crew to create something that never quite embodies but does recapture in brief moments the glory of its predecessor. It doesn’t boast the quiet comic genius that underpinned much of CotBP – the tongue-in-cheek nature of much of that movie was what made it so glorious – but during its funnier moments, does hint at the same irreverent sense of humour that was so charming in the first movie. For that and for Depp’s triumphant return as the world’s best oddball pirate (and I’m admitting a bias here because I loved the first film so), I’m willing to forgive a lot. Now fingers and every other appendage crossed that the third movie makes better sense out of DMC than it did itself…