For the last two days, I have thought hard about the third installment in Disney’s pirate franchise “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.” I have mulled it over in my mind, looked at it from every possible angle, considered all its facets, and I have come to the following conclusion: I have no idea what it’s about. And this is a movie based on a theme park ride. Imagine how lost I’d be if it were based on a book, or even a pamphlet.

Director Gore Verbinski is the kind of man for whom the old axiom “more is better” are words to live by. “Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl,” the first and clearly the best of the three “Pirates” movies, logged in at two hours and 23 minutes. Its sequel, “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” ran a clean two and a half hours — a modest seven minute increase. But “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” tips the scales at two hours and 48 minutes. Actually, since “At World’s End” picks up immediately after the events of “Dead Man’s Chest,” these two movies are more like a single five-and-ahalf-hour film.

Rather than use this third movie to tie up the two previous films, Mr. Verbinski has added a dozen new characters and plots, or at least I think he has; things constantly appeared to be happening, but I had a hard time following any of it. This much I do know: As the movie begins, Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) and Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) are on a quest to Davy Jones’s Locker in order to rescue Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), who isn’t quite dead yet but rather in limbo. Along the way, they acquire a crew of Chinese sailors, a witch named Tia Dalma who talks like a Rastafarian fortune cookie, and good ol’ one-eyed Mackenzie Crook from “The Office.” Also, a monkey. Meanwhile, back in the Bahamas, the repressive Lord Beckett (Tom Hollander) is stripping pirates of their civil rights, but he can’t strip them of their urge to sing in close harmony. After that, things get hazy.

At one point, Tia Dalma grows to 60 feet tall, then turns into a pile of crabs, slides into the sea, and is never heard from again. Chow Yun-fat plays the Chinese pirate king Sao Feng, but after eating a leaf and trying to rob the virtue of a white woman, he retires to his trailer and takes his subplot with him. Keith Richards, looking drunk, shows up to read from a book, then stumbles off the set. Apparently, he’s a pirate lord, but the market is a bit glutted with pirate lords (nine of them, in fact), so he doesn’t add much to the film. To the dismay of all the mothers in the audience, Mr. Depp doesn’t show up until the 40-minute mark, and to the similar dismay of the young lads in the theater, Ms. Knightley wears a leather tea cozy on her head and pulls faces for most of the film, exuding all the danger and sex appeal of a fluffy kitten tangled up in a ball of yarn.

“At World’s End” may not make a lick of sense, but it does have something far more important: $200 million. If anyone tells you it’s not fun to watch someone spend $200 million on-screen, they’re lying. Mr. Verbinski shoots sea battles inside a giant swirling toilet bowl, sword fights in the riggings of spectacular looking ships, and you don’t want to turn away from the screen for a second, lest you miss a costume specially woven by a Turkish hill tribe.

At least, it should be that much fun, but even Mr. Verbinksi seems to struggle to spend all that money. A 90-minute movie would make Disney just as much money as this bloated flick, if not more, since exhibitors could screen it more times a day, but after making Disney a billion dollars with “Dead Man’s Chest,” Mr. Verbinski is a man to be indulged. He’s been given the power to put his every dream on film, regardless of cost, but what’s baffling, in the end, is how dull his dreams turn out to be. Far too much of “At World’s End” is made up of talk, and meetings, and betrayals, and backstabbings, and tea parties, and even more talk.

And so, a word of warning for parents: Toward the end of the film, our besieged buccaneers are presented with a stark choice. Lord Beckett’s fleet has gotten the drop on them and their only hope is to fight their way out against overwhelming odds. The pirates have to decide: fight or parley, with parley being pirate talk for “take a meeting with the bad guys.” “Fight!” I urged them silently. “Choose fight!” They choose parley. It would take a 13-year-old (the film is inexplicably rated PG-13) with a heart of stone not to be shattered by this development.