Pirates of the Crib

So I really enjoyed Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. The production design is awesome, and I was intrigued to learn that there's probably a reason that I was reminded of the look and feel of Sleepy Hollow (1999) several times: Rich Heinrichs was the production designer for both movies. In fact, he has an interesting filmography in a variety of roles, including production design on Lemony Snicket, The Big Lebowski, and Fargo, set design on The Fisher King and Edward Scissorhands, and stop motion animation on Buckaroo Banzai.

I particularly admired the variegated sea-creature designs of the crew of the Flying Dutchman, with their barnacle, starfish, and coral extrusions, and those are pearls that were his eyes. The movie as a whole seems to be similarly cobbled and coraled together from the flotsam and jetsam of a zillion other action-adventure-fantasy movies, including those listed above. (Yes, Cap'n Jack abides.) They could have cut the whole cannibal sequence without any loss to the plot, such as it is, but the plot is in the pudding, or is a pudding, or is just a delivery mechanism for the raisins, or maguffins, or something. I enjoyed the thing more than I expected to, that's all I'm sayin'.