A Salvageable Shipwreck

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

  

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is the fourth installment in the wildly popular Disney franchise based off of their ride of the same name.  This series has propelled actor Johnny Depp into a new realm of stardom.  The first three films were enjoyable summer entrainment featuring some rather impressive visual effects and lively performances from Depp and Geoffrey Rush.  Director Gore Verbinski was able to bring back to the cinema what Cutthroat Island failed to do so many years ago; give the audience a swashbuckling good time at the movies.  With On Stranger Tides there's still plenty of swordplay from our favorite captain, Jack Sparrow (Depp,) except this time we're left scraping the barnacles off the poop deck.

Captains Sparrow and Barbossa (Rush) are back and they are ready to set sail for the mysterious Fountain of Youth.  The attractive and feisty Angelica (Penelope Cruz) has enlisted the help of her former lover, Sparrow, to help her and her father, the murderous Blackbeard (Ian McShane) find the fountain.  The mythical fountain is the key to saving Mr. Blackbeard’s life from his already foretold death.  King George (Richard Griffiths) wants Barbossa to find and claim the fountain in name of England.  Both parties have to get to their destination before the Spanish do.

As we dawn this voyage with them it's quite clear that this film is not related at all to the other three films.  I don't have a problem with that.  The former trilogy had come to a decent conclusion and now it is time to move on.  The premise of On Stranger Tides sounded interesting and I wanted to see where the screenwriters were going to go with it.  Unfortunately in the process of getting us to the Fountain of Youth we are introduced to several new characters and creatures that make our ship tread through some shallow waters.

I was hoping to see a pairing of Sparrow and Barbossa, working together to achieve the final goal.  That actually doesn't happen until about half way through the film.  Prior to that, we are bombarded with lots of scenes between Depp and Cruz.  Angelica can wield a sword, but Cruz seems miscast as her.  She lacks the looks and personality of what it means to be a pirate.  Cruz's character comes off as an annoying, unwanted distraction in this adventure on the high seas.  Also, Blackbeard isn't much of villain.  McShane is trying his hardest to bring something new to the table, but his character is written so indistinguishable from our typical idea of what it means to be a pirate that hardly anything stands out about him.  Barbossa and Davy Jones (Bill Nighy) were much more interesting and compelling villains in the previous films.

The creatures we see in this film aren't worth sending a message in a bottle back home about.  Mermaids and zombies just are not as entertaining or visually appealing to watch as Barbossa's skeleton crew, Jones's crew of sea critters, or the monstrous, multi-tentacled kraken.  I'd say there's a little too much sword play in this one.  I understand that this is a movie about pirates, but fight after fight of metal against metal; I grow weary of such sequences.  Show me something new.

I think what saves this film from being completely dead in the water is when Depp and Rush are together on screen doing what they do best.  You can tell that the two of them are still having a blast playing their characters.  And that is what On Stranger Tides should have been all along.  The scenes between Barbossa and Sparrow took me back to how I felt while watching the first film.   As I watched Curse of the Black Pearl a grin came over my face because of how much I was liking a film that was based off a ride from a theme park.  When Barbossa and Sparrow finally do meet up, that grin came over my face again.  Somewhere along the way this film lost that feeling I got from watch the first flick.

On Stranger Tides does have a couple of well-done sequences accompanied by fantastic, lifelike sound design.  Hans Zimmer's loud and memorable score is still there and effective as ever.  Depp and Rush provide ample amusement as they continue to pump life into characters we’ve grown to love.  These four things save this film from being a complete mess.  Rob Marshall, new to the franchise, should stick to directing musicals, Penelope Cruz should not be in pirate movies, and screenwriters Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio should've written a better script.  A script that could’ve captured some of that magic and excitement from the first three films.  Although this film does a good job a distancing itself from the previous trilogy, something is clearly missing this latest endeavor.  On Stranger Tides manages to get back on course after a while but I still felt like I was left to walk the plank.