Chris Kavan's Movie Review of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

A Toned-Down Pirates Only Average
Chris Kavan - wrote on 05/22/11

As the original Pirates trilogy went along, it seemed that certain elements were put in just to make things as crazy as possible. In hindsight, it made the movies implausible, but, I admit, at the same time it also made them a lot of fun.

On Stranger Tides moves away from that element. Sure, you still have some of those elements: flesh-eating mermaids, rigging that comes to life with the wave of a sword but compared to the previous two films, this one seems much more grounded - which turns out to be its biggest strength and ultimately weakness.

The main problem with this Pirates is that is shows flashes of brilliance but shows far more mundane elements. While Ian McShane plays Blackbeard to gravelly-voiced brilliance, the addition of Penélope Cruz wasn't nearly as good. She has fire, but I didn't feel a lot of spark between her and Depp. And while Captain Jack Sparrow is still the same old pirate, at this point it's just really going through the motions.

In fact, I would the opening 15 minutes, when our erstwhile pirate has a chat with King George (played with abundant foppery by Richard Griffiths) is probably my favorite part of the movie. That opening is the closest to capturing the spirit of the original as the movie gets. The closest to approaching the more outlandish aspects of the sequels is the mermaid scene. At least they take a novel approach - beautiful women who also happen to want to strip the flesh from your bones.

I also like the interaction between Depp and Geoffrey Rush - they've gone from rivals to that overused term "frenemies". Sure Barbossa is still a stone-cold pirate to the core but he's the closest thing to friend that our Captain Sparrow has in this world - as Gibbs is more of an employee than confidant. It seems all the interesting characters this time around lean towards the evil side of things.

As far as the story goes, you would think going after the fountain of youth would inspire more sense of adventure - sure there are still some great one-liners thrown in but the whole father-daughter Blackbeard side of things, old-flame spurned romance, the priest-mermaid thing - none of these other plot points really worked for me. It tried to create drama where drama wasn't needed - I still saw how this was going to end far in advance without all the extrapolation.

I'm sure there's going to be enough interest to warrant a 5th entry and while I appreciate trying to tame down the more wild elements, I see now that's what made Pirates so much fun in the first place.