Stephen Hunter

Certainly handsome, well made and for most of its running time gripping, the film ultimately turns into a $60-odd-million piffle.

Well told, handsome, stirring and loads of fun.

It believes, in the end, in the decency of most people.

Illustrates the law of returning diminishments.

The movie's stroke of sheer genius is its wondrous ending.

The rhythms excite expectations that go unanswered.

Funner, biggerer, brighterer, bolderer, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End is not only okay, it may even be close to good. A lavish spectacle illuminated by Johnny Depp's swishing pirate captain, the movie has its dull moments, but not many.

At least it cares enough to steal from the very best. Unfortunately, that's about all it cares about.

I liked, too, some late plot reversals, sorely needed after the numbingly simple straight-ahead plunge of the first hour of the movie. Things aren't quite what they seem and the twists are neatly done.

Macdonald has a fetching feel for the continent, and the movie has a powerful sense of what Africa looks and feels like; you can almost smell it.

It goes so far -- way too far -- as having a known actor play Grant.

The film, therefore, is like a child's view of these events, untroubled by complexity, hungry for myth and simplicity.

So smug and so proud of itself, and you can tell that everybody involved conceives of it as a civics lesson instead of a story, that they squeeze all the life out of it.

An exuberance, a celebration, a hoot, a kick and a half.

Amalric is low-key and immensely likable, but what makes his Paul a worthwhile companion on a three-hour voyage is his utter sincerity, coupled with self-aware irony. He's not a phony, a user, a Romeo or a slut. His earnestness is his best quality; he tries so hard to do the right thing, sometimes only failing by a little. [10 Oct 1997, p.N48]

It can only be said that if you like this sort of thing, then this is the sort of thing you like.

May be the most ruggedly decent film to come along in a couple of decades.

So predictable it could have been written by a chimp who's watched too much TV, the huge movie is as dumb as it is loud, and it's way too loud.

The movie, directed by Steve Miner, a "Friday the 13th" vet, never quite gins up the giddy, sick, politically incorrect power of the more high-powered "Screams" of late.

The occasional big moments are stunning, and kids from the ages of, say, 6 years to 6 years and 3 days will love it. Anyone younger will be scared; anyone older, bored.

Brilliantly played by Denzel Washington

The two women relate brilliantly, and the movie has lots of fun creating an erotic subtext between them.

The movie rides the very thin line between art and trash, between exploitation and illumination. It's true, certainly, that it takes one into a universe of such moral squalor that one feels tainted afterward.

Cameron captures the majesty, the tragedy, the fury and the futility of the event in a way that supersedes his trivial attempts to melodramatize it.

It's a trip to Hell and back, and testimony for embittered cynics of all that a movie can be.

Smith and Lawrence have great comic energy and for at least half an hour are sublimely enjoyable -- until the movie's spirit of bloated gargantuanism takes over. [7 April 1995, p.5]

Takes its absurd premise and keeps itself narrowly focused, pushing its heroic cast through obstacle after obstacle.

It's enough to send you home with jiggly knees and a tummy ache.