Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides Review

The house of mouse maybe well renown for mentally scaring children with the prospects of parents dying before the main character becomes king of the jungle/forest/amalgamated European kingdom by facing down embodiment of evil, but they should also be famous of the amount of sequels said classic tales have received.

Of course this mentality is usually only applied to Disney’s foray of animated films which always have closure and have an unnecessary (and usually terrible) numbered entry whilst their live action movies rarely stand alone. Of course the question is raised for how far you can keep the beast running before it begins to rot away and be a caricature of its former youthful self.

And this is where nearly 95% of people would say Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean franchise should never have been franchise and simply the mildly fun but immensely overrated original as just that instead of the over bloated, confusing mess it spawned.

Unfortunately I’m in the 5% camp who fount not only the original movie The Curse of the Black Pearl an enjoyable popcorn romp with a decent plot and one of the best breakout characters in cinema history, but I also enjoyed it’s two sequels for the same reasons (despite the third being a said over-bloated, confusing mess).

Of course you could argue that once a movie goes beyond a trilogy in the unattractive regions of a fourth, you’re no longer doing it for artistic integrity and character development but rather so you can get that magical gold platted yacht or payoff that costly divorce.

So four years after the believed conclusion, someone at Disney probably really wanted that gold yacht because the fourth entry in the series On Stranger Tides has hit theatres against a tirade of non-interest and questions of how many times Johnny Depp can honestly captivate audiences as a “rock-star pirate”?

Set a number of years after the conclusion of At World’s End, Captain Jack Sparrow is in England, trying to uncover an impostor who is trying to gather a crew to find the Fountain of Youth. This culminates in a series of events that has Jack join terrifying pirate Blackbeard (played by Deadwood actor Ian McShane) and his crew including Penelope Cruz with Jack’s first mate Gibbs join newly made Privateer Barbossa (played once again by Geoffrey Rush) to beat the Spaniards from discovering the fountain first in a fun filled race of constant betrayals, a bizarrely high body count and strange environments as the title suggests.

All in all, it’s a road trip movie, except replace the road with the ocean and strange locals with carnivorous mermaids.

Naturally you’d assume that Disney must surely be taking the mickey (the turn of phrase, not the mouse) by creating a sequel to a story that was closed and depending on how much you like Pirates of the Caribbean will probably determine how much you like this entry.

Whilst On Stranger Tides is thankfully streamlined from At World’s End, it’s still unnecessarily padded to give the movie an epic scope and is adds nothing new to the franchise. Ian McShane’s role as Blackbeard, while decent, is no where near as diabolical as his real life counter-part and despite Penelope Cruz being probably the best female actress the franchise has ever seen, her character is purely there to give Jack a female love interest.

There’s a strange sequence of events that even the film states sounds ridiculous and it’s never clear what exactly Cruz’s Angelica character is supposed to do. Is she a con-artist out for revenge or is she merely someone trying to protect a loved one? It’s one thing to make characters vague for the prospect of resolution later, but then there’s just lazy writing which offers no hints and then leaves us wondering why the character is even there in the first place.

Moving this aside, On Stranger Tides is your stereotypical summer blockbuster with some good set-pieces and CGI that’s nice and easy on the eyes. I didn’t watch this one in 3D like I did with Thor but you lose nothing watching it on bog-standard 2D. There’s a few shots intentionally made for 3D but there relatively short and offer nothing substantial to the main story.

On the whole, On Stranger Tides is shorter and slightly sweeter sequel to its predecessors. It has an all-star cast of quality actors, a decent story even if it boils down to nothing happening with a good soundtrack and maintaining the established universe’s aesthetics.

For those who enjoyed the previous trilogy, you’ll find nothing particularly bad with it other than it lacking the epic scope of the previous two entries and a possible empty feeling that it's existence is simply to make a quick buck. For everyone else, it’s a standard popcorn flick that offers nothing new to an ailing franchise that should have been taken out to pasture nearly a decade ago that will no doubt continue surviving (especially with the prospect of Burton and Depp teaming up for the fifth movie…god help us).

6/10