Pirates II
I have seen Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest twice now, and thought I wuould take a moment to scribe a few of my thoughts on it.

First of all, it is not a movie to watch when you're tired and would rather be home in bed because you have to be up the next monring. I went with my friends Pat, Leanne, and Jon to see the midnight show opening night. I've never really been to a big geek premiere event like that, and man was it interesting... in the row in front of us were about a dozen or so high-school age kids, all done up like pirates and such.

However, the movie is long -- about two and a half hours -- and (as I mentioned) not one to watch when you'd rather be snoozing. My impressions of the movie were colored by this fact, and the fact that it had been... I don't know how long since I'd seen the first one.

Anyhow, on first viewing I thought it was better than Superman Returns (if you've read my review of that, you know that's almost damning with faint praise), but still nothing spectacular. The kids in front of us (kids... geez I'm old) seemed to be really into it, and had a good time, but my thought was, "Man... these guys will suck down whatever pop-culture fad is shoved at them."

Anyhow... I went and saw it a second time this past Tuesday with my wife, my parents (who are up visiting from Maryland), and (again) Pat and Leanne. I enjoyed it more the second time around -- it's still a long movie (probably about half an hour too long) with a bit too much exposition, but I was able to pick up bits of detail that may come into play into the third movie (and there will be a third movie -- the film ends on an obvious cliff-hanger, and some of the third movie has already been shot).

My recommendation -- see it, but if you haven't seen Curse of the Black Pearl in a while, it might behoove you to go back and check it out first.

Also, I am so itching to play in a pirate-themed game right now.
- posted by Josh @ 8:04 PM