Jack, meanwhile, has made clever use of a coffin to escape from a Devil's Island-like prison, paddling it like a kayak back to the Black Pearl, his pirate ship.

He has procured a map with the drawing of a key. He tells his crew, including his faithful first mate, Gibbs (Kevin R. McNally), that he needs to find the key. Why? He doesn't say. But, as Gibbs tells the crew, "What bodes ill for Jack Sparrow bodes ill for us all."

Back in Port Royal, Beckett has usurped the governor's office from Gov. Swann (Jonathan Pryce). Elizabeth and Will both face a sentence of death by hanging for their crimes. But Beckett offers Will a way out. Find Jack Sparrow and get me his magic compass, and you'll go free.

Jack, meanwhile, gets a visit from a ghost: The spirit of Bootstrap Bill Turner (Stellan Skarsgard), Will's father, who has been damned to crew the Flying Dutchman under its captain, Davy Jones (Nighy). You're a marked man, Bill tells Sparrow, before vanishing.

Turner traces Jack to a cannibal-infested island. Elizabeth, meanwhile, has made her own escape and, impersonating a man, has stowed away on a merchant vessel to follow Will.

Later, the trio consult Tia Dalma (Naomie Harris), a voodoo priestess in the bayous, who tells them the secret of Davy Jones' chest. Will Jack and his friends find the chest and unlock its secrets before Davy comes calling?

So little bounty you'll want to mutiny

Dead Man's Chest is the much-anticipated follow-up to 2003's rollicking hit Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. But unlike that adventure story, which was as nimble as a monkey in the riggings, Dead Man's Chest sinks like a galleon overloaded with too much treasure.

As in the first film, Depp's mincing Jack Sparrow is the chief attraction in this sequel film, but he is overshadowed by a plot that is packed with so many twists and turns it makes a viewer seasick. This is not helped by the fact that the movie is the second installment in a proposed trilogy of films and necessarily requires a lot of setup for payoffs that won't come until the last movie. Who is Lord Beckett? What does the East India Trading Company need with Jack Sparrow's compass? Why is Jack Sparrow suddenly the chief of cannibals? What's the deal with that big jar of dirt?

Dead Man's Chest also suffers from the inclination of sequels to take what worked in the original movie and just add more of it. There are more visual effects, more sword fighting, more pirates, more ships, more cannibals, more villains. Too much more. Like Depp, the otherwise charming Knightley and Bloom are overwhelmed by the spectacle and byzantine story.

In particular, a sequence in which Depp must elude cannibals simply goes on and on and on far longer than it should, with very little bearing on the actual story arc. It features a few of the film's key action sequences, which, one suspects, is the reason the sequence was allowed to run as long as it does.

The film also contains its stabs at humor. But, again, where the first movie's humor came naturally, the jokes and pratfalls in the sequel feel forced. That's especially true of the recurring and painfully unfunny Laurel-and-Hardy routine between Pintel (Lee Arenberg) and Ragetti (Mackenzie Crook), whose wooden-eye jokes were exhausted in the first movie.

A word on the visual effects. They are impressive, especially Nighy's Cthulhu-inspired Davy Jones. But they also go too far. Where the first film's spectral pirates were eerie and beautiful, this movie's Flying Dutchmen crew are cartoony when they're not disgusting. It's enough to put a viewer off seafood for good. And don't get me started on that Kraken.