Review of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017) by Thequietgamer — 22 Nov 2017

Easily the best of the Pirates sequels. Yet it still fails to recapture the magic of the original. It's ability to return a sense of fun into the series comes at the expense of the plot. The story-telling is half-heated and it's cool new villain is ultimately rendered forgettable despite an excellent performance from Javier Bardem. Yes, this one is all about the jokes and some over-the-top action sequences. Ultimately I can live with that. It's a big improvement over the blandness of the last three Pirates films.

Johnny Depp is once again able to remind us why his character was so likable the first time around. Here though his buffoonery and eccentric mannerisms are heightened to the point of being cartoonish. It ensures that there are more laughs in the film than ever before, but it makes it hard to actually take any of this seriously. A shame as the first Pirates managed to both make us laugh and get invested in it's characters and plot. The whole cast is largely on point. Particularly the returning faces such as the always excellent Geoffrey Rush and Kevin McNally. Newcomers Brenton Thwaites and Kaya Scodelario are basically just there to inject some new pretty faces into the mix, but they manage to fit in with the rest of the cast quite well. Fans will get a kick out of seeing the long-awaited return of Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann, even if only briefly. When all is said and done this latest Pirates flick gets more right than it does wrong. Especially when in comparison to those truly dreadful sequels that came before it. It makes Pirates fun again. The problem is that it's just lacking in any sort of depth. It's all about the jokes and flashy action, both of which it has in spades. Neither of those make for a great movie when the writing is weak and the villain is so sadly squandered, but at least it's entertaining. I still don't think Pirates should have ever gone past the first movie, but at least this latest outing seems to point towards what could eventually be a decent follow up to the original.

6.