Loved Clerks 2. I was really surprised by the amount of emotional weight that it ended up leaving on me as the plot spooled out. Even the dance sequence totally worked for me, although I think it's mostly because Rosario Dawson treated it really honestly (i.e. she actually loves to dance) instead of it coming off like a staged piece.
As for DMC...I thought the first Pirates was a perfectly fine standalone movie. I understand why the studio pushed for a sequel (well...two sequels), but I kinda wish they hadn't, mainly for the same reason that I thought Die Hard would have carried more weight if it hadn't been diluted by the lesser sequels (see also: Speed/Speed 2). However, the ending of DMC didn't bother me because it was so obviously plotted out to be like LOTR Twin Towers leading in to Return of the King, or Kill Bill 1/2. These are movies that aren't meant to stand on their own, and the only reason that they're presented as they are is that audiences and theaters don't want to run five- or six-hour long films.
