Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

Arrrgh, another summer and again the waves and cannonballs crash as the chow-mein face of Davy Jones waggles, but the biggest special effect and richest treasure of the Pirates of the Caribbean series remains Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow, the unflappable, flamboyant cad. Like the previous installment in the series, this one’s too long, with a convoluted, overpopulated plot and not as much swashbuckling as befitting a summertime popcorn flick. But you can’t go wrong with Capt. Sparrow bickering with and comparing telescope sizes with Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush). And during a particularly vivid hallucination in exile, Jack gets to argue with dozens of replicas of himself. Oh, and the Keith Richards cameo: a waste. He’s got like 2 minutes screen time, lazing about while strumming a guitar and speaking in a voice that seems to be electronically modified to sound deeper and clearer than the slurring scoundrel we’ve come to love via Depp’s homage.