Welllllllll.

This movie was surprisingly about 50% darker than the first. What with all the barnacle-encrusted eternal slaves, and the betrayals, and the alcoholism, and the cross-dressing, and the cheating-on-Will. Oh, and the whole Jack-being-swallowed-by-tentacle-monster. And the crazy witch. And the cannibals.

Couple of points:

A) The cliffhanger was kind of fabulous. I'm not gonna lie, Barbossa being back confuses the hell out of me, but whatever. He's awesome. It's awesome. And clearly Jack is not permanently dead, because Jack Sparrow = Pirates franchise.

B) Jack was amazing. Swishy and femme and played almost 100% for laughs, but I still would do him all week and twice on Sunday. Not to mention that I kind of want to start the First Church of Johnny Depp. Seriously? We all know that every time he exhales, some starving child in Calcutta finds a Fruit Roll-Up.

B) Commodore Norrington. Shit. I knew he reappeared because some asshole's icon on livejournal had him being all disheveled, but I was still a bit stunned. Because, whoa. First movie, pompous kind-of-attractive ass whose only goal in life is to get into Lizzie's corset and kill pirates. Second move...he falls off the wagon completely, and is suddenly MADE OF AWESOME. He's some kind of crazy alcoholic, and he ditched the powdered wig, and his clothes are all dirty and ripped-up, and he is THE SEXY. What the fuck happened to him, exactly? I don't even know. But I kinda like it.

Okay, fine, I really like it. So sue me.

I don't really even know what sort of rating to give the movie, because I didn't even like the first one all that much after the first time I saw it, but nowadays, about ten viewings later, it's one of my faves. Such is life.

Tentative 3 and 3/4 stars out of 5? 'Kay.

Love like the sexifying powers of hard living!