We learn (multiple times) of a kink in Will's plan to kill Davy Jones and rescue his captive father Bootstrap Bill (Stellan Skarsgård): the person who destroys Jones' heart will have to take his place for eternity.  That presents a bit of a problem in his plans to marry Elizabeth, but then again, their relationship has hit the rocks after Will spotted his wife-to-be kissing Jack before the pirate's untimely death at the mouth of Jones' Kraken.  Jones is missing for a good chunk of the movie, which is unfortunate as his character's establishment in the previous entry held a lot of promise, and when he does appear, he's merely a tool of the EITC or having strange encounters with Tia Dalma (Naomie Harris), the oracle accompanying the not-so-merry-anymore band of pirates.  Jack doesn't arrive for a while, either, and his exploits in an afterlife that seems like a bleached-out acid-trip is the movie's first attempt at cracking the overly serious façade that has taken over the presentation of the story.

Even Jack, so genuinely strange and humorous in the last movies, seems trapped in director Gore Verbinski's attempts to make this silly stuff into a serious epic.  He and Barbossa bicker—fighting for command of The Black Pearl, comparing telescope sizes, and debating the proper pronunciation of the word "are" in the process—but it's nothing compared to the way Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush hammed it up with aplomb in the first movie.  On the rare occasions that the pirates are left to be the scurvy dogs they are, the movie finds its humor (the brethren court scene is funny as it turns into an all-out brawl and punctuated by a unfortunately forgettable cameo by Mick Jagger, Depp's inspiration for the role of Sparrow), but otherwise, two seamen (Lee Arenberg and Mackenzie Cook) who have traveled the whole of this voyage provide amusing asides to the proceedings while a monkey steals every scene it's in.  A monkey stealing scenes is rarely a good sign, and it's an ill omen here as well.  There's little action in between a surprisingly violent gunfight at the beginning and the climactic battle-at-high-seas between Sparrow and Jones' crews, and while the special effects are quite effective, these sequences just don't have the inventive thrills of the last films.

And it's long, too.  Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End runs an unnecessary two hours and fifty minutes, and there are only about ten or fifteen of them that actually seem to be part of the series to which we've become accustomed.  The rest is a ham-fisted epic with little joy, lots of outlandish things presented with tongue forcibly removed from cheek, and only some brief moments of the series' trademark humor.  It's actually, sadly, pretty dull.