'Pirates of Caribbean' sequel walks plank

Hollywood's smart guys predicted producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Gore Verbinski were sailing into disaster with 2003's "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl."

After all, no swashbuckling pirate movie had made money since the 1950s. It was a film based on a theme park ride, for Pete's sake, and was cast mostly with unknowns - except for Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush, neither of whom ever had starred in a monster hit.

We know how that turned out. "Black Pearl" grossed $340 million, buoyed by its pirates-as-ghost-story plot, endless special effects and especially by Depp's off-the-deep-end performance as the gloriously fey Captain Jack Sparrow.

Here's the weird part: The "Pirates" sequel, "Dead Man's Chest," is precisely the disaster they were expecting from the first movie.

Plotless, essentially characterless and purposeless (unless you count the desire to make a load of money), the second "Pirates" (a third already has been filmed) has been beautifully shot, impeccably edited and is a veritable master class in technical craftsmanship.

It also makes no sense, is leadenly paced, has only a handful of so-so laughs and chronically mistakes big for better.

Painfully self-indulgent, it runs for 2? hours and feels like an endless version of the theme park ride that inspired it. Worse, it's open-ended. To see how it's resolved, you have to go to the next installment scheduled for release next spring.

The plot? Well, as far as I can tell it involves Jack Sparrow's efforts to recover a chest that contains the heart of Davy Jones. Yes, that Davy Jones, the demonic ruler of the sea and scourge of sailors. As played by Bill Nighy, Jones is the squid-faced captain of the Flying Dutchman and presides over a crew of condemned seamen's souls.

Apparently, Jones holds a note for Jack Sparrow's soul as well, and our mincing hero figures that if he can destroy Davy Jones' heart, he can escape his grim fate.

Also involved in the chase are Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley), whose wedding is delayed by their arrests on charges that they helped Jack escape His Majesty's justice in the first movie. Their happy future depends upon their returning Jack to justice.

The wildly episodic screenplay by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio features sequences that never quite coherently mesh. There's a long passage in which Jack is hailed as a king by a tribe of cannibals, another in which Will discovers that his late father (a barnacle-encrusted Stellan Skarsgard) is one of the enslaved crewmen of the Flying Dutchman, a segment in which Elizabeth hitches a ride on a merchantman by disguising herself as a boy.

Periodically we are treated to attacks by the kracken, a huge tentacled sea beast that at Davy Jones' command pulls entire ships down into the depths. There's a big battle with this brute; it serves mostly to allow the special-effects guys a chance to show off. After a while, all the hacking and crashing becomes wearisome.

Knightley and Bloom are reduced to blandness. Depp, meanwhile, is saddled with a joyless script that requires him to work overtime to come up with a few amusing moments. (Comedy doesn't work if you can see them straining to be funny).

Mostly, this is a runaround movie. Everyone runs over here. Then, they turn around and run over there.

Verbinski's direction suggests he's bored with the whole enterprise. Even his love of outsized machines (remember the fight in the blacksmith shop in the first movie?) feels muted and perfunctory. There's a sequence in which Jack Sparrow's crew is imprisoned by cannibals in a giant wicker ball hanging over a chasm; they escape by using their cage as an oversized hamster ball and rolling to freedom. Then, there's a sword fight atop a giant water wheel careening through the jungle.

Sad to say, those scenes are more fun to envision than to actually watch. Moments that should fill us with delight simply sit there.

Despite its glossy look and masterful special effects, "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" is a bad movie. Fans deserved better.