Another big gun — Variety‘s Todd McCarthy — has slammed Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest for being empty and bloated and too long. He says “there’s not a genuine moment” in either of the two Pirates films, “no point of human contact…they’re baldly concocted, confected, engineered.” (Just as I said in my review that “there’s nothing, nothing, nothing going on inside [Pirates 2]…nothing kicks in within…not ever, not once.”) And he claims the new one “puts the viewer into a bland stupor.” And “why wear out the film’s welcome with a wearisome two-and-a-half-hour running time,” McCarthy wonders, “when a tight-ship 100 minutes would have insured more constant excitement, not to mention giving exhibitors more showtimes per day?”