by Matt Sernaker, Senior Editor

Captain Jack Sparrow returns to theaters for a fourth installment in the Pirates franchise with Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.

Having been a fan of the original three Pirates movies, I was looking forward to this new story with excitement. The setup at the end of At World’s End was an interesting direction for Captain Jack Sparrow, and I felt that they could have easily continued the franchise without the inclusion of Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightly): the build-up of each of the individual characters was really amazing. Three movies is a lot to pull from in terms of story and history. So when I came out of Pirates 4, I was disappointed to find that like Davy Jones himself, Stranger Tides is missing something important…its heart.

When we last saw Jack (Johnny Depp), he had just finished wrapping up all of those pesky loose ends of the original trilogy of films, and was sailing off alone in search of the mystical Fountain of Youth. This pivotal concept was supposed to be the big setup for the future of the franchise. When we find Jack in the newest installment, he is on his way to London to save the life Gibbs (Kevin McNally), his former first mate, who is accused of being the pirate known as Captain Jack Sparrow. After a daring rescue attempt, Jack is reunited with Gibbs and the two men get some alone time to talk about what they have been up to since the last movie was over. Gibbs is very interested to know how things were going for Jack’s search for the Fountain of Youth, but as it turns out, Jack got bored and gave up the search. While the boys are busy talking, it turns out that their escape wasn’t quite foolproof and Jack lands himself inf ront of King George II, who wants to enlist Jack’s aid in finding the Fountain before the Spanish can claim it. King George has a few tricks up his sleeve and has enlisted the aid of Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) in his quest for the rejuvenating waters. Jack makes another daring escape (involving some very impressive strategic planning) and bumps into his dad (Keith Richards), who proceeds towarn him about the Fountain’s deadly properties. Jack attempts to find a ship to make his escape, only to learn that someone has been impersonating him and has begun to gather a crew! Who would do such a thing? It turns out that Jack’s ex-girlfriend Angelica (Penelope Cruz) can do a pretty good Jack impression and unwillingly recruits Jack to join the crew of Blackbeard’s ship! (Insert musical sting here). Can Jack escape the clutches of Blackbeard (Ian McShane), stop Barbossa and the Spanish from reaching the Fountain, and maybe get the girl in the end?

Lets talk about the good things first: the CGI and imagery for the movie look fantastic. Having the opportunitiy to see the film in 3-D, I really appreciated the time and effort that went into the production. The visuals were intense and Disney made good use of the 3-D elements (sword fights in particular were impressive).

Now for the rest of the movie: Unfortunately for audiences, Stranger Tides is a very weak movie overall in terms of the story and acting. After three movies you would have thought that maybe, just maybe, more than three of the previous actors might have been involved in the newest production. The powers behind this movie only chose to include Jack, Gibbs, and Barbossa, and it was such a huge error because these are not the characters that provided the heart of the movie. Will Turner, Elizabeth Swann, Davy Jones, and even Pintel and Ragetti (the two goofball pirates) were such rich and well conceived characters, and instead of trying to replace them with new heroes and villains that were at least on par, we got the complete opposite. This film took away all of that entertainment and introduced a few uninteresting characters that really didn’t connect with the audience on the same level.

Depp’s performance of Jack was extremely “phoned in” and lacking the charisma that made him so enjoyable in the first three releases. A majority of the time it feels as though Jack has regressed to the character from the first film and that none of the character development that he had experienced had ever taken place. Penelope Cruz did a passable job as Angelica, but the character was weak and the performance was less than memorable. Geoffrey Rush’s Barbossa was also extremely disappointing and fell flat a majority of the time, which was very sad to see considering how thrilling of a villain he was in the first story. Ian McShane as Blackbeard was a solid choice but really did not come across as threatening as Davy Jones was in the prior movies. I appreciated the effort that he put into the role (one of the few redeeming things about the film).

Overall, there wasn’t anything new and exciting. The last two movies featured a major climatic sequence (the Kracken was amazing, and the battle in the maelstrom was equally as impressive), but this movie was lacking that big spectacle of a finale. The feeling that I had while watching the film was that this wasn’t anything I hadn’t seen before. It was overly predictable and not anywhere as exciting as it’s predecessors had been. I am sure that Disney will keep pumping out Pirates movies for the foreseeable future, because kids want to see them, but the part that made the first set of movies so fantastic was that it could be enjoyed by all ages. It truly had something entertaining for everyone. So when you get to the point that it feels like “been there, done that”, maybe you need to reexamine your product. I hope that the next movie returns to it’s roots and gets the character’s back on the same entertaining path that we had followed for several years. Bring back some of the other cast, or at least introduce some strong characters that can replace them in terms of likability and contributions to the story.

ComicsOnline gives Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides – 2 out of 5 that really should have been much better.

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