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Movie Review - The 4th Pirates!
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
Stars: Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Ian McShane, Penelope Cruz, Sam Claflin
Faith says:
Let’s be perfectly clear about this. I love Johnny Depp. As far as I’m concerned, he can’t put a foot wrong, so this might be a bit of a biased review. But hey, reviews are meant to be, right?
There are few characters that an actor can truly own. James Bond changes every few years and nobody cares. Actors get fired, go bonkers (naming no names), get ill, and even die; their parts are reprised by someone else and the show goes on. That will never happen, could never happen, with Captain Jack Sparrow. Depp has crafted the character as clearly as if he’d dreamed him up himself, and even if this film is a shadow of its forerunners The Curse of the Black Pearl and Dead Man’s Chest, Sparrow has become such a beloved legend that fans the world over will flock to see the movies as long as Depp keeps making them.
The fourth instalment in the blockbuster Disney series has been long awaited, with a new supporting cast. While Geoffrey Rush once again appears as is-he-a-baddie-is-he-a-goodie? Captain Barbossa, there is fresh bad guy blood in the form of Ian McShane’s Blackbeard – an evil tyrant pirate whose heart is as black as his facial hair. Penelope Cruz takes on the part of Angelica; Sparrow’s former conquest and the long-lost-daughter of Blackbeard, and Philip Claflin stars as a heroic missionary who believes no soul is above saving; even the most bloodthirsty pirate’s.
The fourth adventure chronicles a quest to find the Fountain of Youth – Sparrow in cahoots with Blackbeard and Angelica to find the fountain, while Barbossa has been enlisted by the King of England to reach it before the Spanish get to it. Of course, pirates being pirates, Sparrow and Barbossa have no true allegiance to anyone but themselves and there’s the usual who’s-side-is-he-on-now? rumpus as the swashbuckling, sword-fighting, mermaid-kidnapping, fountain-finding adventure unfolds.
I can’t say I’d recommend seeing this in 3D – all my hopes of having Johnny Depp launching into my lap were dashed pretty early on and it’s really just a load of sword waving, so I wouldn’t part with the extra £1.50 – spend it on Minstrels, and anyone hoping for an adventure on the level of the first two films will be disappointed, but this is, as you’d expect, a fun, entertaining adventure with some great action sequences and entertaining one-liners courtesy of Sparrow. And, not that it matters, he’s as hot as ever.
Oh, to be a lady pirate.
Andrew says:
While Mr Depp doesn’t get me in quite as an excitable state as Faith, it’s fair to say that I too have a soft spot for him. His choice of roles always gravitates towards the edgy, and even in the most ill judged of projects (cough, The Tourist, cough) it’s rare he doesn’t steal the show. It’s therefore with an air of inevitably that his Captain Sparrow is the highlight in Stranger Tides, though even he on occasion seems a little bored by a franchise clearly running on low on ideas. Or at least new ideas.
It’s fair to say I went into Stranger Tides with low expectations, as the franchise thus far has suffered much from that age-old cinematic issue – the law of diminishing returns. With each entry the stories have become more conceited, the supporting cast ever more annoying and, at the risk of being hit with the business end of a Jimmy Choo, Depp’s brilliantly crafted Sparrow an ever increasing parody of what was already a joke. It’s with some relief then that I can say that Stranger Tides is a marked improvement on the last instalment and, if watched with brain suitably turned to the off position, a perfectly pleasant way to pass a couple of hours (thankfully it’s the shortest entry yet).
The set pieces are mostly fun, though the sheer number of them does become a little tedious to be honest, and the story appears to jump between them without much care for narrative continuity. On several occasions it felt a little like I was watching a Transformers film, only with more peg legs. The supporting cast is a marked improvement though, with Ian McShane on suitably fine form and Orlando Bloom Version 2.0 a definite improvement on his predecessor. The fact that a fish has effectively replaced Keira Knightley still makes me smile.
I imagine with multi-million behemoths such as this, the amount of cooks in the kitchen must surely put even the early rounds of Masterchef to shame. Inevitably the final result is going to be mixed, with certain ideas working better than others. With that in mind, if there’s another tale of The Black Pearl to be told (questionable) I for one hope they return to the simple fun of the first movie. If however you’re just looking for your next Johnny Depp fix, directly pumped into your eyes via ill-fitting 3D glasses, you’ll be in your element.
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