Review of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011) by Rosco — 04 Jun 2011

After two disappointing sequels the PotC franchise is back with Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides and I was optimistic that they could rediscover the magic that enthralled us all and make up for Dead Man Chest and At Worlds End.

However after an exciting and an opening with great potential i'm afraid it was all downhill from there. Jack Sparrow is back this time however he is on a quest for the Fountain of Youth however he runs into an old flame in Angelica (Penelope Cruz) who entices Jack and ultimately he ends up onboard The Queen Anne's Revenge, the ruthless pirate Blackbeards (Ian McShane) ship as he himself is after the Fountain of Youth.

And thats were there the problems begin. The characters just aren't as appealing and fail to connect with the audience like the previous characters did in the first three movies. Cruz is decent enough but when you look at how good Keira Knightley was theres no comparison.

Ian McShane doesn't convince as a ruthless pirate or the villain of the movie like Geoffrey Rush or Bill Nighy did as Barbossa and Davy Jones. The plot itself and more importantly has big issues. For the first time in a Pirates film I didn't really see the point of what was happening it just seemed irrelevant.

Many criticisced how overly complicated At Worlds End plot was but this just felt very sub-par and as the film ran along it fell flat even the ending which was too predictable. Instead, it seems as though Rob Marshall has focused on delivering to much action scenes rather than focus on building the story or film or even try and get us interested in a character other than Jack Sparrow because after the 100th sword fight it becomes slightly tiresome.

Thankfully for the film Johnny Depp still does the business as Sparrow and Geoffrey Rush is brilliant as Barbossa however they are treading finely as it seems even with Depp on top form the jokes are wearing thin and the Pirates franchise seems to becoming dull, predictable and stale.