Justine, Justine’s mum and I saw Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest on Thursday and since I haven’t written much else here recently, I’ll write about that, and you can read it if you care.

I really loved the first film. Everything just seemed to work. It was funny, had enough action, didn’t get too bogged down in the lovey-dovey scenes, and was just plain fun to watch.

The second film has pretty much all of the same elements: evil pirates, explosions, people yelling “arrgh”, swordfights, ship-to-ship fights, and a lot more. But it doesn’t seem to mesh quite as well as the first.

I left the cinema not knowing if I really enjoyed the film enough to want to see it again, which is not really a good sign. It seems as though the shell of the film is there, but it doesn’t appear to have the same delicious gooey centre that the first had; it’s been drained or sucked out by some greedy suit.

It’s also really interesting that the guy who created the Monkey Island games saw a lot of parallels between the game and this movie — there are a lot of similarities: the Jamaican voodoo lady in the swamp, the pirate ghost ship (OK, so that was in the first too, in a different way) are the best two examples I can think of. I’m having trouble deciding who would be Guybrush, but I’d say it would have to be the Orlando Bloom character.

I’ll be there for the third, which comes out next year, but my expectations are not going to be as high this time around.