All that's missing is a plot, amusing dialogue, comic timing, and a reason to exist. Presumably these will come in the third installment, already filmed and due in theaters next May. For now, the abruptness with which ``Dead Man's Chest" leaves audiences hanging borders on contempt.
The tattered story line sends first Will, then Elizabeth , out onto the briny to find Jack Sparrow. Threatened with execution by dastardly East India Trading Company head Lord Beckett (Tom Hollander), Will is charged with bringing back a certain magic compass in the pirate's possession. Elizabeth just wants Will back.
What does Jack Sparrow want? To escape the clutches of Davy Jones himself, who sails the Flying Dutchman above and below the bounding main with a crew of the damned that includes Will's own pa (Stellan Skarsgard). First, though, Jack must find a key that leads to a buried chest that leads to . . . well, far be it from me to spoil one of the movie's few surprises. One senses, though, that the plans for the ``Pirates of the Caribbean" videogame were mistaken for the movie script at a crucial juncture.
Davy Jones is played by the wonderful character actor Bill Nighy (``Love Actually ," ``The Constant Gardener "), a curt Scottish accent hissing under a computer-generated ``mask" of octopus skin and squiggly tentacles. All the Flying Dutchman crew have morphed into humanoid sea beasts over the centuries, and much the best part of ``Dead Man's Chest" comes from grooving on the amazing character animation provided by Industrial Light and Magic and five other CG houses. It may be the first movie where the critters out-act the humans.
The Hammerhead Shark sailor, the Hermit Crab sailor, the old salt with a face like a lionfish: This is high-calorie summer spectacle, as eye-popping as it is intermittent. (It's also problematically scary for smaller children; in terms of all-around violence, gore, and fright factor, this may be one of the hardest PG-13s yet released. No nudity, though, since you know how that warps the kids.)
