Review of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017) by Zachary S — 24 May 2017

The best Pirates movie....since the first one! Yeah I said it, and I'll fill everyone in on why I said this and gave it a 3/5...

First lets get the bad stuff out of the way.

((SPOILERS)).

1) Cartoon action sequences that make Jar Jar look real, there are a few of them spread through the movie like flies on horse crap. I'm talking like the wheel scene from Pirates 2 and the Dave Jones fight scene from Pirates 3 had kids and threw them into this movie. These scenes are not only poorly done (With CGI) but they blow the acceptable levels of disbelief so far out of the water, not even Dave Jones can un-sink that ship.

2) Tacked on story points, they are EVERYWHERE in this film, everything from Barbarossa's secret daughter, to the possession ability that Cpt. Salazar pulls out of his butt in the last 20 minutes somehow. There are WAY to many to justify, call this MacGuffins or call it bad writing, but it was all over this movie's poop deck.

3) Cringe...SO MUCH CRINGE. So I'm all for fan service I love the music and Sparrow to death with all his silly antics, but something I can't excuse is dialog that sounds like it was the continuation of the Star Wars lines involving the hate of sand... (For non-SW fans...the lines were hard to listen to) All in all these lines were just a few, but enough to make this list.

4) NO CANNON BATTLES...I know right, how can you have pirates and ships and not have balls flying at each other!?! Well this movie did it, with only one scene involving multiple cannons...and it lasted 5 second, and it involved none of the main characters. This one was a simple score that could have at least propelled a scene into the level of "Oh SH*T DUDE!" cool, but instead we got a dud...

Now, on to the good things!

1) Fan Service...Ever wondered what happened to Will Turner, no? Oh well here you go. Ever wonder how the Black Pearl got into a bottle and how it will get out, here you go, what that scene to be funny and cool, okay! Yeah there is a lot of stuff in this movie that will make pirate fans squeak like little girls. (Or boys?).

2) Not centered on Jack Sparrow. So yeah, this is a plus, for me Jack was always the funny support character, and never the main protagonist...we all know how that turned out...(Pirates 4) But yeah this one had a new lead(s) with Henry Turner and Carina Barbo-Smith...Smith! Who did a rather good job in my opinion.

3) Humor. So I don't know if I am just easy to please, or if my funny bone is broken, but I laughed through 75% of this movie, it had some hit or miss humor, but most of it had the theater cracking up, and that is a plus for me.

The comic timing was spot on with most of the jokes, kinda reminded me of Marvel's Avenger's humor.

All in all it was...okay, enjoyable for fans and drunk college students...not so much for kids, parents, and...anyone else. If you have a need for a pirate fix, then...go watch Curse of the Black Pearl because this one feels more like...a run of the mill adventure with pirates sprinkled in. At the end of the day, I might buy this movie, or go see it again if it was on sale...

(Again these are just my opinions, but I'm 100% correct no debate required).