JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

There’s a Kurt Vonnegut story set in a future society where true equality is enforced by handicapping the gifted. Everyone is required to have the same level of ability in everything, so dancers have heavy weights attached to their ankles to make them less graceful, and the beautiful must wear masks. The intelligent have to wear a contraption that causes an explosion to go off in their heads at regular intervals, interrupting their thought processes.

This is the guiding principle of Pirates of the Caribbean 3, in which something explodes every 3 to 5 minutes, preventing coherent thought in the viewer. You can’t finish asking why the plot suddenly veered that way, what the hell they’re talking about, and wasn’t that fellowship/scary elf-queen stuff in The Lord of the Rings? You forget the question even before you’ve finished asking it! In fact you can’t remember enough of the story to review it, which is just the way Disney and Bruckheimer like it. After all, the movies are based on a theme park ride, and they are true to their source, i.e. thrilling and pointless.

I did enjoy seeing Keith Richard, though. His continued existence is a slap to the medical profession. If your doctor advises you to give up something you love “for your health”, the best retort is, “But Keith Richard. . .” You can’t tell a guy in his 60s to quit taking drugs, he’s old. Then again he’s a guitar demon, so he probably has some kind of pact with the devil.