Pirates of the you-know-where

Got to see the third instalment of Pirates of the Caribbean a week or so ago. I'm just not too sure about it.
Way too long (but so was the last one) and terribly waffly in places.
Then there was the big speech by Keira/Elizabeth (the other Swann) meant to rally the troops, and I thought everyone would laugh out loud at the end of it, because I nearly did. But no, they rallied.
I have to say that she's no Aragorn.
I can still shed a tear over his rousing cry "This is not that day!" in the final Lord of the Rings.
Keira, I'm afraid, wouldn't get me heading off into battle. She might just convince me to sit down to a nice lunch with that inspiring tone, or maybe get so fired up that I stop yawning, but face violent death and an afterlife stuck with old tentacle features? I don't think so.
And as much as I love Jack Sparrow, I think he's really lost the plot. Well, Jack has, obviously, but so has his scriptwriter.
Anyway, I wonder what other people think...

Whew!

I'm back from Auckland and recovering from all that talking and reading and making stuff at Storylines.
Thanks to everyone who came to hear me read and asked a millions questions at Kohia, St Cuthbert's, Kowhai and Epsom Normal schools, and Next Page Please bookshop, and also at the Family Day.
I was asked to judge the Storylines writing competition in Auckland and it was amazing to see how many entries there were - we ran out of space on the display boards - but that made it even harder to judge.
The winners were Jamie (age group four to eight) who wrote about a dreaded pirate captain who smelled as bad as a "500 year old mustard sandwich", which is an image that's hard to beat, and Eleanor (9 -12) for her warning about the effect of floodwater on the ocean's fish. Bruce Potter judged the drawings and chose winners in each age group who happened to be sisters - although he didn't realise that at the time - so take a bow, members of the Berge family.
I wish I'd had about a dozen prizes.