film | Yo ho-hum

That sinking feeling threatens to turn into out-and-out submergence in PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST, a poky sequel to the 2003 Disney shock-blockbuster that caught pretty much everybody off guard, probably because it was adapted from the studio's own theme-park attraction, and hello, did anyone enjoy (or even see) Country Bears or The Haunted Mansion? Actually, Pirates 1 was a bit of a slog itself — expensive but empty, your garden-variety Jerry Bruckheimer production — but it boasted an unexpected secret weapon in the kooky delights of Johnny Depp's wholly unique interpretation of a rascally buccaneer captain as the lovechild of an intoxicated glam-rock star and one of those wind-up toy monkeys with the clapping cymbals.

In Dead Man's Chest, Depp's Jack Sparrow is still a scene-stealing force to be reckoned with, but the audience now expects this, which mops the surprise whimsy of Pirates 1 right off the poop deck. What remains? More of the bloated same: stern-to-bow sea battles, swordfights, supernatural intrigue, shifting loyalties, and — least interestingly — tepid romantic entanglements between sweethearts Will (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth (Kiera Knightley), Jack's sporadic allies, occasional adversaries, and the action figures most likely to be collecting dust in the Toys R Us clearance bin long after all the Johnny Depps are nabbed. The first movie essentially exhausted these characters and their (admittedly nifty) universe, but Dead Man's Chest chugs along with a cheery self-indulgence, taking time — 150 minutes of it — to continue old plot points as though you care about Will and Elizabeth's cardboard relationship or recall how the hell a fellow by the name of Norrington (Jack Davenport) fits into the picture. Actually, you might. Me, the only bits of Pirates 1 I remember in the three years since i saw it are: A) the terrific Depp; B) the terrific production design; and C) that i was delighted to find the terrific Mackenzie Crook — Gareth on BBC's The Office — popping up as a bumbling pirate lackey with a rogue glass eyeball.

And oh yes, the special effects also impress, particularly the pixels that bring to life the tentacled mug and squirming mannerisms of Davy Jones (with a vocal/motion-capture assist from the incomparable Bill Nighy of Love Actually), the cephalopod villain who commands a crew of fearsome oceanic mutants to capture Jack and collect an old debt: his soul. Too bad Davy must've also grabbed the one that belongs to the movie. For all its big action, sensory bombast and intermittent distraction, Dead Man's Chest tries to compensate for a hollow center with pointless excess (the half-hour allotted to an interlude with a savage island tribe, which has nothing to do with anything; the double- and triple-crosses that emerge less from logic than whimsy). It's kinda like finding a box of Cracker Jack filled with only toy prizes: At first, you're all oooh ahhh, but when hunger sets in, there's not much to chew on. C