PIRATES OF THE CARRIBEAN 4- On Stranger Tides; Perfect

Did anyone actually expect “Pirates
of the Caribbean” to be as good as it
was? Sure, it’s a movie about pirates
and Johnny Depp’s tipsy Keith
Richards impersonation, but it’s also
based on a ride at Disneyland for
Christ ’s sake. It certainly surprised
the hell out of me. The sequels,
“ Dead Man’s Chest” and “At World’s
End”, both sucked, but the original
holds up. And while nowhere near as
good as the first, the latest film in
the franchise, “Pirates of the
Caribbean: On Stranger Tides”, is
exponentially better than the second
and third installments.
Part of my problem with two and
three is that they took the best part
of the first film, Depp ’s Captain Jack
Sparrow, and screwed with the
character. Sparrow is a self-
interested scallywag, to be sure, but
he ’s not an entirely bad dude at his
core, and while he’ll screw you over
and abandon you, he’ll feel guilty
about it and come back to rescue
you, eventually. In “Dead Man’s
Chest” and “At World’s End”,
however, he was just a complete
turd, and after a while I stopped
rooting for him. Couple this with the
fact that the first movie was able to
keep Orlando Bloom ’s douchbaggery
in check, while it was allowed to run
roughshod all over the sequels, and I
never need to watch them again.
“On Stranger Tides” returns the
Cap’n to his original form, the first
time you see him, he’s laying it all
on the line to rescue his first mate,
Gibbs (Kevin McNally), from an
imminent execution in London. After
engineering a daring escape, Jack
hears rumors that someone is
attempting to rustle up a crew using
his good name. Turns out that the
imposter is Angelica (Penelope Cruz),
an ex-flame in drag, a woman who
had been training to be a nun before
she met a certain heavily-mascara ’d
pirate. Through a series of
unfortunate events, unfortunate for
Jack anyhow, he is shanghaied and
wakes up in the last place any pirate
wants to be, below deck on the
Queen Anne ’s Revenge, the infamous
ship of the even more infamous
Blackbeard (Ian McShane).
Blackbeard is on his way to find the
fountain of youth in order to avoid
his impending death, which was
foretold in a prophecy. Oh yeah, it
also turns out that Angelica is
Blackbeard ’s daughter. That’s going
to be an issue.
As if all of this isn’t enough, Captain
Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) pops up
again, hot on their tail, and those
pesky Spanish are also in the hunt.
Then there are zombies, mermaids
(who are cannibals with Spider-Man-
esque webs, who knew?), voodoo, a
mysterious ritual no one knows
much about, and all manner of other
roadblocks to overcome. There are
swordfights galore, swinging from
yardarms, and all of the usual
swashbuckling goodness that you
want from a movie about pirates.
It’s fun, but “Pirates of the Caribbean:
On Stranger Tides” is far from
perfect. There is no reason for it to
be as long as it is. The plot is
needlessly complex, and in trying to
be twisted it only succeeds in being
silly and muddy. There are subplots
that should have been trimmed way
down, if not cut out all together.
Chief among these is the awkward
love story between a sexy
missionary (Sam Claflin) and an
equally sexy kidnapped mermaid
(Astrid Berges-Frisbey), that never
resolves, and I can only suspect is
some sort of lead in to the next
sequel. (Only time will tell how valid
my theory is.) At times the movie
gets too cute and cheeky, like when
Jack pauses to eat a pastry in mid
skirmish. You’ll recognize a few
scenes because they were lifted
straight from the earlier films. The
initial meeting between Jack and
Angelica is virtually identical to the
first battle between Jack and Will in
the first film, even down to the duel
in the rafters. But the worst issue for
me was the 3D. I ’m not a fan of the
choice to make every big, epic,
adventure movie in 3D, but in this
case it is especially pointless. The
only times director Rob Marshall and
crew make use of the technology are
the moments when Blackbeard or
some other character points his
sword at someone. Aside from this
handful of instances, the rest of the
3D is just a distraction, or worse,
completely unnoticeable.
Yeah, there are problems, lots of
them. Some of these troubles might
be unforgivable in other movies, and
some seriously stupid shit happens
near the end, but the fun parts are
fun enough carry you through most
of the rough patches. And McShane is
a fantastic addition to the series. His
Blackbeard delivers an appropriate
level of menace, and his sinister
presence helps balance out some of
the weaker elements. “Pirates of the
Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” isn’t
as good as some of this season’s
earlier blockbusters, like “Thor” and
“Fast Five”, but once you’ve seen
those, and when you have some
time to kill before “Green Lantern”
and “X-Men” open, it’s an
entertaining popcorn movie that’s
worth a look if you’re into that sort
of thing.