Re: Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides - Discussion and Gradi
Well, I finally saw it this evening after not being able to due to one planned underway and one unplanned underway (fucking useless typhoon).
While I enjoyed the movie immensely (how can you not with Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush?), it wasn't quite as fun as the trilogy. The film wasn't as witty as the previous nor did I connect with the characters as I did before. Much to my shock, I actually found myself kind of missing Will and Elizabeth even though there story is complete and I didn't want them to return in this one. Nonetheless, Ian McShane as Blackbeard was fantastic, as was Penelope Cruz as Angelica, although I can see people's argument that she and Depp had no chemistry (I thought they were fine, but they weren't on the same level as Depp and Knightley).
One thing I'm realizing the film was missing was all of the charismic secondary characters. People like Norrington, Governor Swann, Pintel and Ragetti, Marty, Cotton, Murtogg and Mulloy, Tia Dalma, Lord Beckett, Davy Jones, Bill Turner, Anamarie, and so on. In this, only Gibbs, Gillette, Groves, and Teague return, but Gillette and Groves was never all that interesting and Gibbs suffers from a larger role (and the interaction between him and Barbosa doesn't really click), although Teague was amusing as before. I had absolutely no interest in the clergyman (whose name is apparently Philip Swift but I never heard that name uttered) and Syrena, especially in the last 30 minutes of the movie. I found Stephen Graham to be completely wasted in the role as Scrum because I know he can interesting and charismatic (as seen in
Traffic and
Boardwalk Empire).
That being said, I loved many aspects about the film: Jack's entrance as a judge, "Captain, I wish to report a mutiny. I can name fingers and point names," the Black Pearl (and other ships) being trapped inside of bottles (along with the environment they were in), the idea of Barbosa being in the service of the Crown, the entire initial mermaid sequence (but it's a pity the film was rated PG-13), coy references to the original trilogy (my favorites being Barbosa eating an apple in a fancy table setting and Jack Sparrow single-handedly taking down British men with a rope and wrap them up around a tree a la the end of
Curse of the Black Pearl with Will), and especially Judi Dench's all-too-brief cameo where she utters the single, yet wonderfully self-referential, double-entendre line of "That's it?!"
Overall, I would rate it a 3.5/5 and below all three films of the trilogy.
Edited to add: Like others in this thread, the moment I saw the Fountain of Youth, I thought "Hey! It's that lumpy doughnut from outer space..."
It was cool that they brought back Barbossa. Rush is just as great as Depp in these movies. I hope he keeps appearing. He is the Daffy Duck to Jack's Bugs Bunny.
Brilliant! They are indeed this generation's Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck.
