Bloated

At World's End and Spider-Man 3: REVIEW

By now, there have been thousands of reviews that have dissected the original Pirates of the Caribbean; each trying to understand what made it successful...what made it work. Most conclude that it was Johnny Depp’s vivacious performance. While that certainly remains a factor, part of the charm lies in the script’s simplicity.

It’s amazing to me how clear each character was. Even Depp’s Sparrow was driven by a lucid motive: he wanted a boat. True, the boat symbolized freedom…but still, the character’s drive was so easily understood that the cogs of his deception remained themselves understood.

Such is not the case with “At World’s End”.

When I sat down to write this review, I could not decipher a logline for the picture. I couldn’t even muster a through-line. Here’s what I do know about the film: it involves pirates and the East India Company and at one point there is a spectacular battle in the middle of a whirlpool. But taken as a whole, this movie is a complete mess.

To me, the problem lies in the charm of the original. Yes, Depp’s performance was brilliant. …But his motive? That was sublime. There is no such motive in “At World’s End”. 70 percent of the time, the actors don’t even seem to know where the hell they are. The original had a simple through-line (save the girl, get the boat). “At Worlds End” offers a contrived myriad of counter attacks and backhanded maneuverings, all derived from no motive other then Disney’s motive to kill 3 hours.

Yes, the film is roughly three hours. Why, I don’t know. A coherent storyline doesn’t materialize until the final twenty minutes of the film…and when it finally does materialize, it sucks anyway.
Plus, two of the film’s thespians offer up some of the most painfully earnest performances you’ll ever see. Can you blame them? They probably thought they were on the set of Lawrence of Arabia.

Another film to suffer from such glut is Spider-Man 3.

Directed by Sam Rami, Spider-Man 3 revolves around the idea of revenge. Mysteriously bestowed with a clingy alien tar, Peter Parker sets out on a quest of revenge against the man who murdered his uncle. At the same time, Harry Osborn sets out on his own quest for revenge against Peter. Additionally, Peter feels he’s ready to ask Mary Jane to be his bride. Also, the guy who allegedly killed Peter’s uncle turns out to be Sand Man, and he himself is on a quest to put his daughter through a much needed operation. Furthermore, the damn movie clocks in at two and a half hours.

Rami always danced close to the edge of bloated. In Spider-Man 3, he finally tosses aside reason and super sizes his franchise.
Why this has become such a trend in big budget sequels, I don’t know. (Perhaps they’re compensating for the insane ticket prices). In any case, I would think the inclination would be to streamline these franchise films into simpler, 120 minute flicks. It’ll save story for possible sequels and allow more show times to be booked. But damn it, there’s Rami, pissing out more plotlines then you can shake a stick at.
And yet, I have to give him more credit then the group behind “At World’s End”. Despite bursting at the seams with story, Spider-Man 3 does balance its load far more gracefully then the troubled Pirates sequel. Even better, Rami is able to draw out a conclusive message from his labyrinth plotline…namely, revenge is a poison. He conveys this with the recurring visual of the black alien symbiote that consumes Peter Parker. This slithering, slushy black goop strikingly crawls across the screen like a poison, infecting everyone it bonds with.

While I’m at it, I might as well say Rami’s directing aesthetic puts Verbinski’s to shame. The direction of “At World’s End” is comprehensible at best. Spider-Man 3, on the other hand, carries real color and punctuation. The editing and camerawork both work in tandem to create a zany visual aesthetic that smacks of its master’s sensibilities.
The movie also features Rami’s tacky humor. One standout moment has Bruce Campbell as the maitre d' in a fancy French restaurant where Peter and Mary Jane are dining. Elsewhere, a waitress asks James Franco how his pie is, and he replies by taking a bite and saying through the cheesiest grin ever, “Sooooo good”. Why, Rami’s interpretation of Eddie Brock is far more laughable than his brain eating comic counterpart. (In a side note, Topher Grace does infuse the character with a very unsettling odium later on in the picture)

While this cornball approach works in various scenes, it ultimately contributes to the film’s downfall. Following his acceptance of the black alien tar, Peter proceeds to dance through one of the lamest musical montages put to film. There were moments like this in the previous two films, but it seems a bit indulgent here.
Worst of all, the film’s bloated canvas really turns out to be a curse in the final act when Rami is forced to resolve very difficult subplots in ways that feel like an evasion. Powerless to escape a building that he himself lit on fire, Rami simply tells us there’s a trap door right beneath him. Unfortunate.

Having walked away from both films, I felt like I had just been bludgeoned with the weight of a David Lean flick (minus the thematic quality). Each film comes in at around two and a half hours…or two hundred and thirty pages. It’s both a burden to carry and watch. It’s also a disappointing fate for two franchises that began as throwbacks to the light-hearted popcorn flicks that built the summer.

And yet, I’m sure if I had been telling this to the respective studios, I’d simply be told to wait for the next installment.