KEY POINTS:
Herald rating: 2 out of 5
Now let's see if we've got this right. Having been swallowed by a sea monster in the last one, Captain Jack Sparrow is dead, or at least in Davy Jones' locker which is actually a vast salt desert where, despite being dead,
he gets to kill several hallucinated versions of himself aboard his beached ship, before a mass of crabs transports the vessel to the coast for a rendezvous with the rest of the cast who have survived sailing over the edge of the earth into this nautical netherworld.
Right ...
Now Captain Barbossa, Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann need to rescue Sparrow because there needs to be a meeting of the Nine Lords of the Brethren Court - a pirates' steering committee if you will - which has been called after an excursion to Singapore to consult Chinese captain Sao Feng (Chow Yun-Fat) who may or may not be as evil as his beard and scars suggest.
With you so far ...
Meanwhile, the calamari-faced Davy Jones and the rest of his brutally ugly aquarium has joined forces with the British to hunt down Sparrow, Barbossa and co because they have his still beating heart in a box.
Now you're lost me ... actually no, I take that back. I was confused with the multiple Johnny Depps before. And now it's already an hour into the movie and this really isn't going anywhere is it?
And then just about everybody changes sides. Or the characters who are meant to be dead spring back to life. Or vice versa. Or turn into a giant pirate goddess with a silly name. And that's not forgetting the really long, very dull meeting of pirates from all parts of the world trying to explain what the plan is for the next hour or so of his nearly three-hour movie.
It's at this point Keith Richards delivers his much anticipated cameo as Sparrow's dad. He might give Jones' fishy mob a run for their doubloons in the ugly mug department. But you can't help but think you were the inspiration for him?
And then comes the big sea battle. Or is it battles? There is one where two ships are firing at each other from either side of a giant whirlpool which is one way to speed things up. The biggest Brit ship in the battle is called "Endeavour" (which, I think entitles those in this part of the world to a 50c discount for historical insult).
But, like so much of the rest of the action in the third Pirates of the Caribbean film, it just reminds you how incoherent it all is. It's not that the story's too complicated. It's that it's not a story but a bunch of leftover ideas from the other films lashed together.
After the charming opening chapter of 2004, the previous instalment, Dead Man's Chest, piled on an excess of everything except narrative clarity and convincing performances. But it was restrained compared to At World's End, and its story which constantly defies even of the logic of the semi-mythical world it first created out of a Disney theme park ride, while its characters spend most of its duration shouting at each other in piratese.
As for the leads, Knightley remains Kate Winslet with all the acting sucked out, Bloom spends most of the movie glowering from the gunwhales and Depp's Sparrow is far less entertaining this time round, even though there's much, or should that be many, more of him.
He does at least get one good line though: "Gentlemen, I wash my hands of this weirdness."
With ya there matey. Abandon ship. And abandon all hope of a good time, all ye who enter here.
Cast: Johnny Depp, Keira Knightley, Orlando Bloom, Bill Nighy
Director: Gore Verbinski
Rating: M, supernatural themes and violence
Running time: 168 mins Screening: SkyCity, Hoyts, Berkeley
Verdict: Avast ... waste of time