Completely Useless Movie Previews: Pirates of the Caribbean 3

It is time once again, gentle readers, for me to take you into the future, to experience a movie that I know nothing about asides from what I have witnessed in trailers. And I shall dub this experience "Completely Useless Movie Previews" as I always do, and you shall enjoy it, as you always do.

And so. On to Pirates of the Caribbean 3: The Search for Spock. As you may recall from not watching the last installment, famed pirate Jack Sparrow, tired of the graveyard shift at Long John Silver's, has found himself swallowed up by an enormous special-effect and sent to Davy Jones' Locker, where he reminisces with the former Monkee about how much of an ass Mike Nesmith was, and whether the movie Head still offers relevant commentary on society today. Meanwhile, the dude that done what got killed back in Episode I is now alive, eating apples, and hanging out with hot voodoo priestesses. You know. The guy with the hat. He said, "Arr" a lot.

This time out, we find Jack living in his own personal hell, the desert. As a soon-to-be-former desert dweller myself, I can sympathize. Jack has passed beyond the end of the world, which apparently not only involves being eaten by a giant octopus, but also getting flushed down a large toilet drain (maybe after coming out of the other end of the octopus?). Back in the real world of make-believe, Jack's boytoy love-elf Will Turner and his breastless sweetheart Natalie Portman, er, Padme Amadala, er, Keira Knightley are in hot pursuit, meaning that they are hot for each other while in pursuit. Pursuing them all is Squid-Face, rejected Dick Tracy villain, who blatantly appeals to the tentacle-fetish Cthulhu crowd that Hollywood and advertisers clamor for. Executives of the mega-conglomerate British East India Company (makers of rich chocolate Ovaltine) also appear as part of their sponsorship deal.

So, you may ask me. What happens? Well, the trailers aren't too clear on that. Apparently they enter an Archie-inspired costume contest and dress up like Genghis Khan. They attend a Pirates of the Caribbean convention. They say, "Arr" a lot. Oh, and they finally engage in a battle royale in which a hundred zillion CGI-created pirates enter, and only three or four that have top billing emerge from. Over the course of the film, everyone gets killed two or three times each, only to come back like Aeon Flux did on the very next page. (I hear that, if you watch it in reverse, everyone still dies and comes back, except that it happens in reverse.)

So, you may again ask me. Is it worth sitting through three hours and spending $20 on malted choco-balls now that we know what's going to happen? No. No it isn't. But that won't stop you. This film, you see, is Critic-Proof(tm). Meaning that Jerry Bruckheimer spent a lot of money to spray it down with preservative chemicals that cause stains like Gene Shalit's spittle and vitriol to wash right off with a simple application of a firehose. You will go, you will like it, and you will not kick my seat or talk over the dialogue. Understand?

On my Critic-Proof(tm) and UV-resistant scale of 1 to 88 Basho the Sumo Wrestlers (cast in quality designer resin for display in the home, garden, or World's End), I give this movie six of Keira Knightley's abdominal muscles, some self-tanning spray, and a bag of chips.

Yes, all that, and a bag of chips.