The irony of "At World's End," the third and most expensive installment of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies, is that the most entertaining moments are those that likely cost the least to film.
The point, though, is that the movie does entertain.
Many reviewers are going to focus on the gargantuan budget -- and the monstrous running time to match -- but to do so is to undervalue the movie's many throwaway pleasures.
Sure, there aren't nearly enough of them to justify the cost, but it's not like we had to pay the production bills. At most, we're out 10 bucks.
It would be fool's gold to attempt a plot summary, for this is a series that has become increasingly inscrutable -- it has the linear clarity of a bogus treasure map.
At any rate, any movie that involves something called the "nine pieces of eight" doesn't really care if you can follow it.
Those pieces have something to do with the pirate lords who convene for a final battle with the East India Trading Company, which hopes to rid the seas of their kind. Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), who was taken to the depths by a giant squid at the end of the last film, is one of these lords, and so his friends Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) set out to rescue him.
"At World's End" also brings back Captain Barbossa, Geoffrey Rush's villain from the first film, and Rush's maniacal devotion to corny pirate cliches is one of the pleasures I mentioned. When he growls "Argghh!," he really means it (if such a thing is possible).
And then there is Depp, who is given even more rope by returning director Gore Verbinski than in the previous pictures. There is a wonderfully surreal interlude, set in the undersea otherworld Sparrow has been taken to, in which Depp gets to do some clowning around with various versions of himself.
"I wash my hands of this weirdness," he says at one point, but he's clearly relishing it.
Verbinski also delivers some beautifully stark imagery, including a shot of Sparrow trying to drag his ship across a salt desert. Indeed, "At World's End" is deliciously atmospheric throughout, from the steamy opening set piece in Singapore to the yawning maw of a maelstrom in the climax. The money that went into these sequences was well spent.
Even so, wouldn't it be nice if we could return to a time when we didn't always have to talk about movies and money? "At World's End" will be discussed in terms of its budget, marketing costs and opening-weekend gross, even though none of that really matters when you're actually watching the picture.
"At World's End" isn't perfect, but it's more enjoyable than any movie this expensive, this long and this confusing has a right to be.
It's even more enjoyable if you don't bring a calculator with you to the theater.
Read more by Josh Larsen at LarsenOnFilm.com.
Contact him at or (630) 416-5206.
Stars Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Geoffrey Rush and Bill Nighy. Rated PG-13 for violence, frightening images.
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