aptain Jack Sparrow is back, his braids dangling, nostrils flaring and bad-boy sashaying – not to mention serious kohl eyeliner - in full throttle. But while "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" tries to create the theme-park-ride thrill, it's not the experience you might be expecting. At just over three hours (including end credits), sitting through "At World's End" isn't as much like being on a thrill ride as it is more like waiting for one.

Filmed simultaneously with "Dead Man's Chest," "End" goes out on a note of fierce action and operatic death, but the story is so convoluted and impenetrable, so impossible to grasp hold of, that it's hard to understand the shifting allegiances or make sense of why the different sides are fighting. Clearly, the mantra of this installment is "More, more, more."

This film does indeed bring us to the promised ends of the Earth - voyages to Singapore, the Arctic Circle, back to the Caribbean and, of course, to the World's End, a torrential waterfall.

The trilogy coda picks up where "Chest" left off. Heading off to Singapore to capture the attention of Captain Sao Feng (Chow Yun-Fat, given precious little screen time and adds very little to the story), a posse of pirates, led by Elizabeth Swan (Keira Knightley, looking great in her pirate garb), now a expert pirate herself, Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Capt. Barbossa (a lovingly over-the-top Geoffrey Rush) hope to book passage to Davy Jones' Locker to retrieve the endearingly loopy Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) from insanity. Things don't go smoothly.

Nine pirate captains are needed to battle Beckett and the cursed Davy Jones (Bill Nighy), as the team takes to the far edges of the globe to assemble a plan to fight. Much was made of legendary Rolling Stone guitarist Keith Richard's casting as Jack Sparrow's dad, which is a bust, using up a mere three minutes of screen time.