Captain Jack is back - and that’s the good news. The bad news is that the sequel to the hit Disney film, “Pirates of the Caribbean” is a bit confusing and way too long.

The film starts with an incredibly slow and boring exposition. Will and Elizabeth’s wedding gets interrupted when they are both arrested for aiding and abetting the escape of Captain Jack Sparrow. Jack is at sea with his crew on the Black Pearl, but he is a lost man and his magic compass, which will direct him to what he desires most, won’t stop on any particular direction. When Bootstrap Bill, Will’s dad and a member of Davy Jones’ crew on the Flying Dutchman, tells him that Jones is coming for him to join his crew, Jack and his mates head for land. Will is granted his release so that he can try to convince Jack to hand over the compass to the head of the East India Trading Company and soon Elizabeth gets her release and goes after Will.

The rest of the film sees these three characters intersecting at different times, each with their own motivations. Some scenes are entertaining, like Will and Jack’s escape from a cannibal tribe, and some feel very tacked on and useless, like a bar fight in Tortuga and Elizabeth’s stint on another ship all together.

“Dead Man’s Chest,” like its predecessor, looks great. The scenes at sea are spectacular looking and the creatures, from Davy Jones and his crew to the Kraken, are lots of fun. Jones and his crew have taken on the appearance of sea creatures combined with humans, so that one may have the head of a squid or a hammerhead shark but could also have arms and legs as well as lobster claws, shells or tentacles. For much of the film, the Kraken is just a mass of gigantic tentacles, but their size and the destruction that they cause is a sight to behold (at least the first few times). In addition to these epic sea battles, scenes in a swamp and on the island inhabited by cannibals offer some stunning cinematography as well.

The performances range from great (Bill Nighy as Davy Jones) to good (Johnny Depp as Jack) to mediocre (Orlando Bloom as Will Turner). Jack has a few good lines and Depp gives the role his all, but because the character has no center in the film, the audience can’t truly get behind him for much of the film either. The confusing, overly drawn-out story doesn’t help matters either. Jack is looking for a key that will unlock a chest which contains Davy Jones’ heart, but why can’t he find it? We don’t really know. We hear bits and pieces of Davy Jones’ story, but it feels like there is little connection to the overall story of the film. In the first film, Barbossa and his ghostly pirates were a large presence and a great foe, but in this film it feels like Davy Jones and the Dutchman are cast off to the side a bit.

Overall, the main flaw to the film is that it either takes too long to get to a classic scene (Cannibal Island) or a great scene runs too long (three-way sword-fight on water-wheel) or gets repeated too often (Kraken attacks). The film is also hurt by the high expectations that many in the audience are sure to bring in to the theater with them. I was expecting to see the best movie of the summer when I sat down to screen this and now I’m wondering if “Cars” is going to be the one film that sticks out as the lone classic of the summer of 2006.

That being said, “Dead Man’s Chest” has a superb ending and if part III were playing right after this film, I would have stuck around to watch the conclusion to the series. I will undoubtedly see film number three when it is released next summer, I just hope that a lot of the excess gets trimmed before it comes to theaters.

**1/2

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