Author: Mary Beth

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Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

In theaters.

The sequel was never going to be as much fun as the original. The first Pirates of the Caribbean movie succeeded because its charm was so unexpected: the wildly goofy story, the boisterous score and, of course, Johnny Depp's wonderfully weird performance, sneaking a cult-movie sensibility into a studio extravaganza. The sheer surprise of finding that much giddy joy in what appeared to be a by-the-numbers action movie made Pirates of the Caribbean charming.

How could the sequel hope to duplicate that, to again surprise us when the memory of the first surprise is what brought us to the theater in the first place? The makers of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest attempt to compensate for the lack of surprise by offering more — more pirates, more Depp, more action, more supernatural silliness — but their eagerness to please strains the movie's appeal. Subplots for every character weigh the story down. The set pieces feel contrived rather than organic, with director Gore Verbinski virtually shrieking, "Look at this! Isn't this cool?" Even some of Depp's loopy behavior feels like pandering now that his Captain Jack Sparrow is no longer a risk, no longer original.

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Prep

By Curtis Sittenfeld. Published in 2005.

Am I ever going to get to the point where I can read about the torments of adolescence without suffering flashbacks? I couldn’t ever make it through more than 10 pages of Curtis Sittenfeld’s story of a hyper-self-conscious teenage girl without having to set the book aside for a while, to remind myself that I’m 26 now and should be past this stuff.

Prep, Sittenfeld’s debut novel, has its faults. The plot meanders lazily, and Sittenfeld sometimes relies too heavily on stereotypes when sketching minor characters. That said, her portrait of the neurotic loner as a young woman is so spot-on, so well-observed, so fully realized, that it makes the book's flaws look utterly inconsequential.

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Mamma Mia

Now playing at the Cadillac Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway.

Escapism comes easily to some people, but I’m not one of them. I don’t have anything against escapism (though I wouldn’t want to live in world where every movie, book and play was mere frivolity), and I enjoy it when it clicks with me, but more often than not, I sit frowning in my seat, picking holes in the plot, overanalyzing the themes, and generally driving everyone around me crazy by subjecting a goofy romantic comedy to the same critical rigor I would, say, a Shakespeare play.

Not wanting to alienate my loving family members, I went to Mamma Mia, a weightless Broadway confection featuring the music of ABBA, with a mantra — It’s only a silly musical — that I silently intoned to myself through the production. The mantra was supposed to prevent me from being a dispassionate killjoy. I’m not sure whether it worked, but it certainly got plenty of use.

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Jersey Boys

Now playing at the August Wilson Theatre on Broadway.

I am not the target audience for this musical. At 26, I am less than half the age of the average nostalgic Jersey Boys theatergoer. I grew up in the sunny sprawl of Orlando, Florida, not the hardscrabble streets of New Jersey. Furthermore, Frankie Valli's overbearing, nasal falsetto in "Walk Like a Man," the only Four Seasons song I could confidently name before seeing this show, makes me want to stab an ice pick through my skull — or his.

Yet Jersey Boys entertained me in spite of all that, in spite of myself. Not all of the music is to my taste — I still consider "Walk Like a Man" one of the more egregiously awful pop concoctions ever inflicted upon the American public — but some of songwriter Bob Gaudio's later compositions intrigued me, and if nothing else, the story of the foursome is fascinating.

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The Devil Wears Prada

In theaters.

Society is forever presenting women with false choices. You can be a good mother, or you can have a rewarding career.  You can be self-sufficient, or you can have a happy marriage. You can be a prim virgin, or you can be a self-loathing slut. But never both and never anything in between. The choice is either A or B.

The Devil Wears Prada cheerfully sets up its own false dichotomy: A woman can be ambitious, or she can be a good person. And this, too, is misogynistic crap. It doesn't matter that a woman wrote the smug, self-righteous novel on which the movie is based. Underneath the pretty clothes and tidy conclusions, The Devil Wears Prada is simplistic and insulting.

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Doubt

Now playing at the Walter Kerr Theatre on Broadway.

The philosopher Bertrand Russell once said, "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves and wiser people so full of doubts." I love that line. I think it has a great deal of truth to it, but it is incomplete. Someone overwhelmed by doubt cannot act, and sometimes circumstances demand action, even if the best path is not apparent.

John Patrick Shanley's play Doubt grapples with that: the morality of acting decisively in a painfully uncertain world. It's a beautifully crafted work, perfect in its ambiguity; when the actors come to take their bows, we still don't know for sure whether the characters acted rightly. We don't know what the truth is. We, too, have doubts.

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Superman Returns

In theaters.

I’m no expert, but I can’t think of anyone in the comics pantheon who is more of a Christ figure than Superman, sent to Earth by his wise, noble father to save humanity. Superman Returns certainly doesn’t shy away from religious allusions. Two characters explicitly describe the Kryptonian knight as a savior and argue over whether the world needs such a champion. The confrontation between Superman and Lex Luthor — wielding a dagger of kryptonite, thus rendering the hero powerless — reads like the road to Golgotha: Earth’s savior is viciously beaten and taunted and left to die on a desolate landscape, the sky cracked by lightening. And at the film’s climax, Superman falls to earth with his arms spread wide like a man on a cross, though we know, of course, that he will rise again. Superman Returns is an action movie by way of The Passion of the Christ with a splash of The Da Vinci Code thrown in to muddy the waters.

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Wordplay

In theaters.

I don't do crossword puzzles, and I've felt ashamed about that for years. As a word nerd with obsessive-compulsive tendencies and a brain full of trivia, I might have the personality for it, but crossword puzzles were always my mother's domain. A crossword puzzle fiend, the acknowledged master of all word games in my extended family, she was simply too intimidating an act to follow.

The documentary Wordplay, however, is so infectiously enthusiastic about crossword puzzles, its subject, that it made me want to get over my filial angst, pick up a pen and start filling in boxes. After all, I did beat Mom once in Scrabble — what a glorious day that was! — and as I haven't lived with my parents for years, I wouldn't have to fight her for the daily newspaper.