As a special treat this weekend we went to see Pirates of the Caribbean : At World's End. We were going to see Spiderman 3, but after all the negative reviews and comments from people we know who've been to see it, we decided to wait for the DVD on that one. Pirate's 3 was vastly superior to the previous installment. As I suspected, it suffered from the first half (Dead Man's Chest) containing most of the plotting and exposition, while World's End suffered none of that, and rocked along at a reasonable pace with plenty of action and adventure.

Captain Jack had his character returned to his full glory, and while it seemed he was an out-of-control fool for most of the film, by the end it became clear that there was a plan in motion all along, and he is rather clever in fact.

Captain Teague, Jack's father, is only in the film very briefly, but Keith Richard's is an effortlessly cool pirate lord.

All the character have their own individual resolutions to their stories which is good. There are no redundant characters as such, and they're all interesting in their own way. I found myself looking out for Jack the monkey, or the little crew member quite a bit.

This movie also seemed a lot funnier and we laughed a lot more than the previous one. Overall, a vast improvement. I really hope that if they do another movie, and it was left open at the end for more adventures, that they do the movies as standalones, rather than shooting one extra long film that gets chopped into two installments. I suppose I'll have to go buy Dead Man's Chest on DVD now, since I fully intend to purchase At World's End when it becomes available.

A small warning though if your planning on taking small children, it is over 3 hours long, and your butt will be numb by the end, especially if you have wriggly children on your lap. Also, it's probably worth watching the second film again, because it helps to understand what's going on in this one, unless of course your memory is really good.

What's good:

• Captain Jack in Davy Jone's Locker


• Jack the monkey is pure gold


• The maelstrom battle


• The escape from Singapore


• Jack's mental health issues


• The pirate meeting


• The shocking ending of one major character

• Lots of doublecrosses can get confusing