"Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End"

Some movies are too much of a good thing; others are too much of a bad thing. And some, like "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End," are too much of nothing -- very expensive nothing.

The third and (please God) final entry in this screamingly successful Disney franchise is, like its predecessors, big on spectacle: There's so much to look at that you never know where to look. Director Gore Verbinksi and writers Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio have shoehorned so much action, movement and manufactured dazzle into the picture -- all cued by Hans Zimmer's hyperventilating music -- that the thing never simply breathes. This is a glazed, inhuman, cluttered piece of work, a storytelling mishmash that buries the considerable charms of its actors under heavy drifts of silt. It will make heaps of doubloons, but at this point, the "Pirates" franchise is essentially collecting a tax from moviegoers: See it and like it, matey, or you'll be out of step with the whole universe! And who wants that?