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Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
You know that feeling you get when you see a really great movie? I don't have it
Starring: Johnny Depp, Penelope Cruz, Geoffrey Rush, Ian McShane, Kevin McNally, Sam Claflin, Astrid Berges-Frisbey, Richard Griffiths, and Keith Richards and Judi Dench, both for less than a minute
Rating: PG-13 (Action/Adventure Violence)
I went into Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides expecting to be blown away. I wanted a plot that made sense (that's asking a lot out of the Pirates movies). I wanted awesome fight scenes. I wanted Will and Elizabeth. I wanted Captain Barbossa. Instead, what I got was very little if any ingenuity, a nonsensical story about the Fountain of Youth and mermaid tears, swords crashing against each other so loudly that they sounded like gongs, no Will or Elizabeth, a cranky Barbossa that I hated, and, in my opinion, the third best movie in the series (it's slightly better than At World's End).
Don't get me wrong. It may sound as if I hated the movie but I did not. I liked it, but I found it merely decent. I do, however, hold the belief that the only reason people keep watching these movies is because of Johnny Depp. Who can blame them? I myself love Depp and I love his Jack Sparrow character. When I bashed the other Pirates movies for whatever reason, it wasn't because of him. He is fantastic. Sparrow is one of the few characters throughout film history to completely transcend the movies surrounding him. This is because of Depp's greatness and his dedication to the role.
Joining Depp this time is the gorgeous Penelope Cruz as his former lover Angelica. Cruz is quite good in the part and the chemistry between her and Depp is electrifying. They provide some of the most memorable back-and-forth scenes in the movie. I was extremely let down by Geoffrey Rush this time around as Barbossa but I disliked more the direction his character takes than Rush's acting. Barbossa was already mean enough, the right sort of mean, and for some reason the screenwriters decided to make him even more mean and it's the wrong sort of mean. I grew to despise him with a passion over the course of the film. I enjoyed Ian McShane as Blackbeard but he started to sound like the bad guy from a really cheesy SyFy movie after a while.
The mermaids are very cool but the part of the plot that involves extracting one of their tears is not. Are...you...freaking...kidding...me? Remember in the last sentence of that last paragraph where I said the thing about cheesy SyFy movies? Extracting a tear from a mermaid in order to drop it into the water from the Fountain of Youth so that it can become more potent sounds like something from a really cheesy SyFy movie. So did Aztec gold that turned people into skeletons at nighttime, Davy Jones being a squid and keeping his heart in a box, and a gypsy that turned into a giant and then dissolved into a bunch of crabs. That last one didn't just take the cake; it stole the whole damn bakery.
But hey, who cares really? We all go to these movies to see, as I said, Jack Sparrow but also to see what crazy fight scenes the filmmakers will throw at us next. I'd say that in On Stanger Tides, it's about half-good and half-awful. Most of the swordfights are too loud and frantic and one in particular gave me a splitting headache. Throwing in some crappy CGI did not help matters any. What happened to that great hamster wheel scene from Dead Man's Chest? There is absolutely nothing in On Stranger Tides that is as memorable as that. Still, I found myself entertained by a few of the action sequences. The chase scene toward the beginning of the movie in which Sparrow is attempting to escape from King George's (Richard Griffiths) guards is very well-done and really funny.
When I dug deep enough, I found that there was a large amount of enjoyment to be found in On Stranger Tides. If there is a Pirates 5 (God knows what the subtitle will be) in the works, as the end of On Stranger Tides suggests, I hope that a lot of work is put into the script and that the action sequences are handled with more care than in this one and At World's End. Orlando Bloom I could do without (he's more up my friend Jennifer Cortina's alley) but I want my Keira Knightley back. It was such a joy to see her in last year's Never Let Me Go and I really want to see her new film Last Night. It would also be nice to see Penelope Cruz return for the next installment. Know what else would be great the next go-around? BRING BACK THE OLD CAPTAIN BARBOSSA!
Score: 3 1/2 out of 5
Categories: None
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