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

Toy Story 3 Review

Film trilogy's never work. There, I said it. You know it's true. Let's move on with our lives and try to forget why we always think that there will be three (count 'em, three!) great films of the same series, in a row.

I mean, let's think about, The Godfather trilogy is ruined by the third part being the runt of the litter (while by no means outright bad, it just happens to be tagged on to the near perfect first and second parts). The original Star Wars trilogy fell apart by having elite Stormtroopers defeated by an army of Teddy Bears in ROtJ and The Matrix...well I like it, everyone else seems to think it should have ended with number one.

So yes, trilogies always end in error usually by the third part. Whether its plot's are too outlandish (or a rehash on the first movie aka The Karate Kid), the character's can no longer be developed in coherent ways or we simply get bored of them, there has never been a consistently good film trilogy.

So, where does this leave Toy Story? You remember Toy Story right? It was that film released in the mid-nineties where toys apparently come to life when their owners aren't around? Is pretty much the Big Bang event to the CGI explosion of kid's films which happened after?

Of course you remember.

Toy Story was a masterpiece not just for little kids who were taken a back that their cartoons now look like their Playstation cutscenes but was filled with a child-like wonder, memorable characters and a concept that anyone who had ever felt an emotional attachment to a toy could relate to (including, SHOCK!Fully-Grown-Adults!!)

The story sees Andy (the owner of all the toys) receiving a Buzz Lightyear action figure (voiced by Tim Allen) who thinks he's a real space ranger. Eventually Buzz usurps Tom Hank's cowboy doll Woody as his favourite toy which leads to Woody growing mad with jealously but thanks to a sequence of events, leads the two teaming up to survive the terrors of the great outdoors.

A sequel arrived four years later (which is pretty early for Disney considering they finally answered that lost winter question for Bambi II, sixty-four years after the original) in Toy Story 2, which did the rare thing of somehow being equal/better than the original.

All the toys returned for a rip-roaring tale of the prospect of growing old. Woody is suddenly a rare commodity who gets Toy-Napped by an evil Dennis Knight (who reprises his role from Jurassic Park with a goatee) who wants to sell him to a Japanese Toy museum. So Buzz and the gang have to save Woody who realises his time is slowly coming to an end and wonder's about a life after Andy.

Like all sequels, it's bigger, has more characters but never loses the heart of the original. There's a particular song which could melt any stone heart but despite the looming doom, the character's remain optimistic at the end and we do too, even though for anyone who's owned a toy, where do they all end up in the end?

So over a decade later and after much behind the scenes fuck-ups, Toy Story 3 hits the big screen:

IN ADEQUATE AND ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENCE MAKING 3D.

In an unusual step, the film takes place an considerable amount of time after the second with Andy heading to college and the toys seemingly left abandoned in a toy chest. After a complicated series of events, the toys decide they're not wanted anymore and take a gamble on a trip to a daycare centre and I'll leave it at that.

So, how is Toy Story 3 without revealing spoilers I hear you ask?

Amazing, simply put.

Some of the wonderful characters from the previous two return (with others logically already gone) and again, the film ups the ante. It's a real sombre feel compared to the other two as you can't help but think throughout the entire film the toys are doomed to their fate due to father time.

You desperately want to see them through just like all the hard-ships beforehand, but the odds have never been higher and despite Woody and Buzz's optimism about a life in the attic in case Andy ever needs them, there's a sense of dread with all glimmers of hope being just that, glimmers.

The new characters are all pretty fantastic but none more so than Michael Keaton's Ken, whose feminine behaviour provides quite a few chuckles. The rest of the gang are still the same old, just a lot older and scared of the prospect of being thrown away.

Set pieces have expanded and are a tad more frequent but never lose they're unpredictability. The final one in particular will pound your heart into dust, mainly due to the emotional investment made with the characters over the past fifteen years. The animation and character models are all easy on the eye which makes it very easy to immerse yourself in the film's intriguing universe.

There's not a whole bunch to write about, so I'll leave it here. For those of us you grew up with these movies and want to see a satisfying and emotionally draining ending, it's perfect. For parents who want a popcorn flick to keep the kids semi-quiet for under two hours, it's perfect and for anyone who has ever owned and loved a toy, this is one for you too.

...and try to spot a certain antagonist from the first movie who makes a nice lil cameo. At least the writers decided not to make him a potential psychological train wreck after what happened and instead a tras...oops.

10/10

H