Review: "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End"

The third installment in director Gore Verbinski's swashbuckling "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise doesn't run aground so much as toss you about on a sea of action gestures followed by the dead calm of flat dialogue. Those who love being buffeted by impressive special effects, their narrative compass spinning wildly, will get their fill with "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End," starring Johnny Depp, Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom. For the rest, the overloaded sequel exhausts without ever satisfying.

Cluttered and clattering, busy with jokes that never bob to the surface of funny, it puts the "oy!" in ships ahoy. Which is a shame.

Because it begins promisingly - if brutally - dark. The East India Co., under the cold calculations of Lord Beckett (Tom Hollander), is clamping down on high-sea drifters and their ilk.

As a uniformed functionary reads the various civic rights being "suspended," a long line of pirates and their folk are hanged. And assembly line meets chorus line as a boy leads his brethren in a low, then building "yo ho" dirge. Awaiting the noose, the lad pushes the film's PG-13 rating and hints at a macabre "Oliver!

" Or better, a scene in the key of "Sweeney Todd." After this bold start, the movie becomes darker still. This doesn't mean more interesting.

Those with aging eyes will wish they had a penlight to navigate the dank lair of pirate captain Sao Feng (Chow Yun-Fat) where Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) and Elizabeth Swann (Knightley) journey in hopes of securing a map to find Captain Jack Sparrow. Verbinski never recovers the bite of his opening tease. Instead, the movie becomes an unkempt Busby Berkeley affair full of action numbers that never quite earn their doubloons in storytelling pleasure.

Tensions set in motion in "Dead Man's Chest" remain: Bent on freeing father Bootstrap Bill from the timbers of the haunted Flying Dutchman, Will Turner (Bloom) seems willing to betray Elizabeth. Nighy is still a sight to behold beneath that amazingly constructed octo-puss of Davy Jones. Witchy Woman Tia Dalma (Naomie Harris) offers more patois forebodings.

Much was made of Keith Richard's casting as Jack Sparrow's dad. Like so much here, though, the promise of that idea turns out to be more thrilling than the deckhand execution of it. The movie is loaded with intriguing characters.

But not since the singular original have even the marquee players gotten their due. A reminder of what should have been comes late. Aboard the Black Pearl, Elizabeth and Will seem to finally find each again.

Their timing is as beautifully absurd as Bogie and Hepburn's was on the deck of the German ship in "The African Queen." This moment of Hollywood romance amid the swirl of combative chaos is the movie's second-best choreographed scene. Only there's no little emotional melody here.

Composer Hans Zimmer overdoes his part, swamping the action with instrumental swells sure to erode beachfronts everywhere. At the end of "Dead Man's Chest," Johnny Depp's utterly unique, unsinkable pirate was cast into Davy Jones' Locker. This vault turns out to be an otherworldly locale of sun-bleached sand and morphing rocks.

Here Sparrow is surrounded by a flock of chirping versions of himself. It's as if the writers were punishing anyone who thought "Dead Man's Chest" short on the mascara-wearing, mincing Jack. It's trippy.

Think Fear and Loathing in the Caribbean. But it's not quite magical. In the movie's parting shots, the filmmakers appear to acknowledge the truth drowned out by flash and opening weekend flurry.

As booty-garnering as the second voyage was and this third is likely to be, it was the first "Pirates" (so spare in retrospect) that was a treasure. They've plundered its characters. In doing so, they've committed their own version of piracy.

The "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise has, of course, become a money machine, but movies about swashbucklers have not traditionally been big at the box office, as this list of the top five demonstrates (first figure is total domestic gross, second is opening weekend): 1. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest $423.3 ($135.

6, 2006) 2. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl $305.4 ($46.

6, 2003) 5. Return to Never Land All contents Copyright 2007 The Denver Post or other copyright holders. All rights reserved.

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