Pirates Of The Caribbean 3 has made what should be dubbed "The Matrix Mistake".

What is The Matrix mistake? Well, The Matrix was a good film that was a big hit and - magically - became a trilogy when this occurred... a trilogy that consisted of part 1 and part 2a and b... not much of a trilogy.

Pirates seems to make an almost identical mistake... although if there was any coherent vision of how the 2nd and 3rd film should fit together, or indeed any coherent vision for the third film at all, it wasn't anywhere to be seen. There is simply a string of happenings that feel as if they were cobbled together at the last moment, with little rhyme or reason.

Concepts and ideas that are entirely new are treated as if they've been around since the start of the franchise - when it felt as if they'd just been tossed in to move the interminable plot along. The writers surely thought they were being clever but they utterly missed what made the original so charming, an interweaving multi-threaded plot... Were the original film to have a plot akin to a tapestry then PotC 3 would have one more like a tangled ball of string that had been toyed with by a dozen cats.

The action is there but one has to question the motivations of the characters and of course... the fact that not one but two characters are brought back from the dead just makes the notion of suspense ludicrous... after all if they can resurrect people once, why not twice? Just another example of how no one really thought this through.

All in all, it's a jumbled mess of a movie that will doubtless make a lot of money but will probably never enjoy the fond memories of the first. Certainly, the action is in there but really... that's about it. The humour is forced, the performances so-so... forget the romance angle and of course, get ready for the backstory to get periodically yanked from beneath your feet as another new idea is talked about as if it was always there.