Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
American Broadcasting Company (ABC) | Release Date: July 7, 2006 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
53
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 37 Critic Reviews
Positive:
15
Mixed:
18
Negative:
4
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
75
Rolling StonePeter Travers
Lively is an odd word for something called Dead Man's Chest, but lively it is. You won't find hotter action, wilder thrills or loopier laughs this summer. Read full review
75
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
It's too long, unnecessarily complicated and often silly, but Gore Verbinski's Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is still the purest popcorn entertainment of the summer. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
The slow, uneven beginning is more than compensated for by the rousing climax. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
Two of the big action set-pieces easily outdo anything from the previous edition. Read full review
75
USA TodayClaudia Puig
It does deliver a combustible combination of ingredients for a summer blockbuster: a cornucopia of action and dazzling effects, some raucous humor and a large dose of Depp's winning charm. Read full review
75
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
Sufficiently resembles the first film that the heartiest fans should be content. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterKirk Honeycutt
Depp is the comic gel that holds the whole enterprise together. The performance is a total delight that somehow combines Bugs Bunny, Peter Pan and Charlie Chaplin. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
A collection of swashbuckling set pieces with the hustle of a vaudeville show. Read full review
67
Seattle Post-IntelligencerSean Axmaker
Verbinski, Depp and company just want to make it the best ride you've had all summer. If that's all you demand of a frothy summer blockbuster, then this delivers the goods. Read full review
67
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
The movie's gross-out effects are impressive but wearying. How apt that the director's name is Gore. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
It's all a bit much, yes, a bit exhausting, that's true, but then why on earth would anyone expect otherwise? Read full review
63
New York PostKyle Smith
This chest is overfilled with exposition and physical comedy, without a doubloon's worth of the scary suspense that made the laughs in the first one such brilliant comic relief. Read full review
63
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
The summer's most anticipated film, and it gives fans what they want - then more of what they want, and more, and more, until gluttony becomes force-feeding. Read full review
63
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
You can't beat on Dead Man's on value-for-money terms, but it's like an all-you-can-eat buffet -- everything's tasty, the surfeit is sickening. Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam Lacey
Again, as with "Star Wars," the interest lies at least as much in the set design and costumes as the narrative. Read full review
60
EmpireDan Jolin
Too long, and too wrapped up in its various plot contrivances to notice it’s veering off course. But Jack just about pulls the wheel back, aided by Verbinski’s flair for cartoonish comedy action. Read full review
60
Village VoiceMichael Atkinson
Even more of a party-hearty-Marty potlatch of silliness than its predecessor. The franchise having been established, Verbinski, Bruckheimer, and Co. have been liberated to indulge in absurdities, pile on the so-old-they're-new-again clichés, and make jokes at their own expense. Read full review
60
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
The cast is entertaining, though with an asterisk, and the special effects are often spectacular, though sometimes not.
60
SalonStephanie Zacharek
Johnny Depp and Keira Knightley manage to sparkle, but this overstuffed sequel is no treasure. Read full review
60
The New YorkerAnthony Lane
Far too long, but thanks to Depp--and to Bill Nighy, properly mean beneath his suckers and blubber--it swerves away from the errors committed by the other big movies this summer. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
The first of two sequels shot in immediate succession, Dead Man's Chest bears the unenviable burden of racking the pins for both movies, which leaves it with precious few opportunities to have a little fun of its own. Read full review
50
VarietyTodd McCarthy
There is a sense of bloat and where-do-we-go-from here aimlessness to this unconscionably protracted undertaking. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesCarina Chocano
Intermittently fun and high-spirited, Dead Man's Chest sags under the weight of its own running time. Read full review
50
PremiereEthan Alter
Dead Man's Chest is best summed up by the scene where Sparrow and Will battle each other atop a runaway water wheel. Like the characters, this movie is just running in circles. Read full review
50
Washington PostDesson Thomson
What do we want in a sequel? Just a little taste of the original or a triple serving piled high? Dead Man's Chest opts for the latter. This Disney movie isn't a follow-up to the first "Pirates of the Caribbean" so much as its empty-calorie clone. Read full review
50
The New York TimesDana Stevens
It batters you with novelty and works so hard to top itself that exhaustion sets in long before the second hour is over. Read full review
50
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
The worst kind of sequel -- the kind that exists only to give you more-more-more of what you liked the first time around, without ever justifying its own existence. This lavish, superbly designed film goes on for an exhausting 2½ hours. Read full review
50
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
A long, tedious and convoluted follow-up to 2003's rollicking high-seas hit, The Curse of the Black Pearl, this second installment in the promised trilogy lacks the swash and buckle of the original. And then some. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
I was worn down by the excess: Depp's fruity impersonation of Keith Richards (or William F. Buckley) as pirate Jack Sparrow; too many bottomless chasms on an island with too many jungle savages (after the fashion of Peter Jackson's King Kong); Bill Nighy playing too squishy a villain with a beard of too many crawling octopus tentacles; too much violence, pop nihilism, and sick humor. Read full review
50
SlateDana Stevens
The effects are breathtaking, and much of the action is choreographed with energy and wit. (A chase sequence on a cliff uses visual gags that defy the laws of physics, Wile E. Coyote-style.) But all of these moments bob on the film's slick surface like so much flotsam. Without a beating heart at its center, this Chest feels empty indeed. Read full review
50
Film ThreatPete Vonder Haar
Exactly the kind of thing most of us have in mind when we think "popcorn movie." It's largely brainless, pretty to look at, and produced solely as a lead-in to another moneymaking sequel for Disney. Read full review
40
Dallas ObserverRobert Wilonsky
Whatever goodwill one harbored toward the first Pirates film is quickly dashed by its sneering successor, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, which is less a film than a two-and-a-half-hour trailer for the final installment in this accidental trilogy. Read full review
40
L.A. WeeklyScott Foundas
Infernally boring for much of its running time, and then, just as the pulse starts to quicken: To be continued. Read full review
38
Boston GlobeTy Burr
A noisy and lazy stopgap movie that goes absolutely nowhere and takes 2 1/2 hours to get there. Read full review
33
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
Yes indeed, Pirates 2.0 is a theme ride, if by ride you mean a hellish contraption into which a ticket holder is strapped, overstimulated but unsatisfied, and unable to disengage until the operator releases the restraining harness. Read full review
33
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
The second movie, Dead Man's Chest, is everything you feared the first would be: a theme-park spectacle lasting 2 1/2 hours. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
More than the usual bad or even numbingly horrible movie. It's an amalgam of many of the modern cinema's worst tendencies and modern filmmaking's most unfortunate misconceptions. Read full review
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