You wouldn't think there was enough gas in the first "Pirates of the Caribbean" (2003) to fuel a sequel, but here it is, "PC: Dead Man's Chest," with most of the original cast and then some. The movie offers an hour of hilarious slapstick and fog-in-the-riggings chills, followed by a hour of tedium and suffering, with the duration trying to figure it all out on fingers, toes and scorecards.

Again the movie is powered by Johnny Depp as Capt. Jack Sparrow; the mincing, oddly dainty, inventively accessorized scoundrel whose villainies are utterly transparent. There's macrame in his hair, crochet in his goatee and the movie is nothing, nothing at all, when he's not front and center - or in the background or at the sides - hamming it up, playing hatsies or lithely slip-sliding away from self-induced chaos.

Where to begin.

"PC/DMC" is framed as a criminal caper of the 19th-century sort, beginning with the East India Trading Company's chilly CEO (Tom Hollander), whose secret ambitions cruelly blast the nuptials of blacksmith Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and spirited lass Elizabeth (Kiera Knightley).

This inspires several sea-chases, while a group searches for Capt. Jack Sparrow and his mysterious compass. Meanwhile, Capt. Jack himself, plowing the seas (for his stolen ship "The Black Pearl"?), is nimbly attempting to stiff a blood-debt to the phantom Davy Jones (Bill Nighy). This latter, having inexplicably leapt from one legend into another, must be astonished to find himself captain of the "Flying Dutchman" and master of Kraken, a seamonster from Scandanavia, who is doubtless equally surprised to find itself in the balmy Caribbean. But no matter. Two (or three) McGuffins figure in the action, as well as various devil's bargains and the Ghost of Sushi Past. A pair of unexplained fellows, a dog and a snarky ex-fiance wander the dunes.

If you are with me so far, you're cheating somehow. The production aims at extravagance and over-stimulation, on sights not ordinarily seen and perils not often imagined outside of Indiana Jones. close students of perfectly realized absurdity will be helpless in the face of pirates escaping inside a giant ball; a three-way duel atop a runaway mill wheel; the episode of the king and the coconuts - just when you thought all possible changes had been rung on food fights.

Think: Vaudeville's King Kong road show version in a banana skirt.

Then the funny lights go out. Scenes aboard the "Flying Dutchman" with its phantom crew siddolvving into sea-forms, are some of the more eerie and arresting cinematics to date. The grotesque, octopus-headed Davy (his smallest tentacles helpfully hold his hat on) is funny-oncce, horrible-twice, and thereafter enought to suggest heave-ho's of an entirely non-piratical sort.

The movie is all-too quickly scuppered by its own too-muchness. Its swash is too mercilessly buckled, timbers shivered to the point of trance and a feeble twitching for the exit. For all its lovely bits, "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" is not the kind of giddy escapism that can be faced twice without a goodly tot of that trade gin, or without a finger on fast-forward. The movie is a squeaky-clean horror and a merry pillage and so, I suspect, the worthy offspring of pirates and thrill rides.