Everyone's favorite pirate is back! And he doesn't have that pesky Will Turner at his side! Yay!
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is the fourth (that's right, they made another after the yawn filled sequels) film in the POTC franchise. And, if Disney's track record proves true, we could be seeing Pirates of the Caribbean: The Search for Jack's Walker before this series bites the dust.
Stranger Tides separates itself from the past Pirate movies, though. It only brings back Jack Sparrow from the past trilogy of films. That's right. Will Turner? In the trash. Elizabeth Swan? She's busy trying to find a new boyfriend. This helps (and hurts) Stranger Tides on many levels. We don't have to suffer through Orlando Bloom's er, acting. Keira Knightley wont be appearing to be bi-polar on which pirate she has the hots for, cutting down on some the dumber subplots that thePirate sequels suffered from. Instead, we get a movie just on Jack Sparrow. Yay.(?)
Johnny Depp returns and gives another knockout performance as Jack, though he has a remarkable lack of jokes. I mean, this is basicallyPirates of the Caribbean: Jack Sparrow gets his own flippin movie! and Jack only cracks a quip here and there. And while he is funny, it just doesn't seem to carry the movie as well as it did in the past films. Depp immediately steals the show in the lengthy opening sequence. He comes on screen and immediately lets the audience know that he is going to be the main star. And he is.
Depp isn't alone in the adventure, however. Penelope Cruz drops in as the mysterious Angelica, and really kick starts the objective of the plot: the hunting of the Fountain of Youth. Angelica knocks out Jack (knowing that if there is anybody qualified to find the Fountain of Youth, it has to be Jack Sparrow) and stows him away aboard her father's ship. No big whoop...Except that her father is BlackBeard! That's right, the king pirate of all pirates is the villain of the Jack Sparrow movie, fittingly enough.
Ian McShane (you may know him as the voice of the white tiger in Kung Fu Panda) plays the diabolical BlackBeard. McShane's BlackBeard isn't exactly what you would expect; he has somewhat of a heart under that bushy beard, and practices voodoo and other black magic to manipulate and frighten his crew. Despite BlackBeard having a heart for his daughter, he is not a nice man (he literally cooks a man alive using black magic. Dark stuff.) McShane plays BlackBeard well enough, but he could have gone a little darker in his portrayal. He feels more like a guy playing BlackBeard, than BlackBeard himself. But, he is still passable...and certainly better than Davvy Jones, sheesh!
Geoffrey Rush also returns as the much loved Barbosa. He now works for the King, which creates an interesting conflict with Jack still being a pirate and all. If you don't know Barbosa and Jack's relationship, then go watch Curse of the Black Pearl. Rush, as always, does a fine job and hasn't missed a beat. So, the Jack Sparrow movie actually has the strongest supporting cast of all the Pirate films...the plot they're acting out just isn't too great.
The idea is that Jack is searching for the Fountain of Youth, but mistakenly gets hired by BlackBeard to find the mythical treasure for himself, so he will live forever and survive a prophesied (was this a pirate prophet??) murder attempt. All the while, Barbosa is trying to find the Fountain too. Oh, and the Spanish want it as well. Bottom line, people want the Fountain of Youth.
Through all of this, Jack fights zombies, fends off vampire mermaids (I know that sounds ridiculous, but it's actually pretty sweet), and discovers Ponce de Leon's shipwrecked boat. Alot happens in Stranager Tides, mostly due to its lengthy runtime.
This story just doesn't work. It could have in the hands of a much better director, but Rob Marshall just can't hit the mark in the big action scenes and his character development is almost zilch. And don't get me started on the romance between a mermaid and a missionary that comes into play about 3/4 into the movie. It's bad. The plot does pick up near the end of the film, but we've already been through 2 hours of awkward story-telling to really care.
One of my biggest complaints is that we really don't know anymore about Jack from this movie than what we did before. Now, someone could make the argument that that adds to the coolness of jack as a character, but it ultimately makes him feel distant. Sure, Jack as a supporting character in the earlier films not having too much of a past is fine, but his lack of a past in Stranger Tides doesn't really make him feel like the main character of the story.
That's not to say that there aren't some good sequences. The mermaid scene is great. It almost feels out of place in such a meh movie. It's old-school Pirate's fun; mythical creatures with a creative twist, Jack coming to save the day, the villain being stubborn and sacrificing his own men. There's also a sword fight with Angelica at the beginning that brings back nostalgia of Jack and Will's fight in Black Pearl. And Barbosa and Jack stealing silver chalices from the Spanish right under their noses is jolly-good fun.
But these bits and pieces don't redeem the film as a whole. Sure, Johnny Depp is still very enjoyable as Jack Sparrow, and the supporting cast is very strong and interesting, and the locales look great, and there's a monkey in a bottle. But, the film as a whole isn't good. Stranger Tides should have went through one more draft, to fix the awkward story telling and character development issues (and completely erase a forced romance). Jack may be cool, but this movie isn't.
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides 2 out of 5 Gold Coins.
No comments:
Post a Comment