Propped up by nothing but profit logic, the movie tries, like the second and third entries, to re-create the big-budge spontaneity of the original film, and again, fails. But while nos. 2 and 3 seemed, upon their release, to be far too easily distracted by tangential adventures which over-stuffed a plot that, with a smarter prep period, could have been smoothed out and made coherent, part of the tedium of this stand-alone installment is in its total straightforwardness and lack of surprise. Once everyone's decided that they're looking for the Fountain of Youth (after an opening half-hour that acts as an enjoyable extended fight scene interspersed with agonizingly witless character introductions and tete-a-tetes), they go off to do just that, and it's a total chore. Cruz is respectable, but her character is simply fiery and nothing more, and the reasoning behind her ambivalent relationship with McShane's Blackbeard is left unclear (and not in a cool way). Rush is equally fine, but again, his character is never given anything really interesting to do. Whereas the screenwriters, having realized after the first movie what Depp could do, subsequently overwrote for Jack Sparrow, they seem to expect Rush to just bring some amusing gravitas to the role and be done with it, and dammit, he sort of tries, but there's ultimately no real reason for him to be there, except to survive to the end, and thus promise to return yet again in the next fucking movie (to be fair, I can remember very little of his actual performance, though that perhaps speaks more for my argument than anything else I could say). The new batch of sleazy crew members are given just enough to make you wistful for the comic duo from the original trilogy, which is an accomplishment (though they get to participate in one of the sporadic high-points: the excellently paced mermaid sequence).
The romantic sub-plot is so cynical in its roteness and so barely related to anything else that's going on that it could have been cut and all we'd really lose is a mermaid tear. It also highlights the absence of Orlando and Keira, who, it has to be said were genuine fun onscreen together (and Knightley managed pretty well on her own, as well). Depp does his thing, and it occasionally comes to life (though definitely NOT in his first scene, which is, in conception, a star entrance, and which, in execution, falls totally flat - - -"Best. Entrance. Ever." intoned the enthusiastic patron sitting behind me. NO-if the actual scene is lacking in any directorial or verbal dexterity than it just sucks, as it does here). Marshall has ditched his DP Dion Beebe for the usual Pirates cameraman, Dariusz Wolzki, and if I hadn't known, I likely wouldn't have guessed that Verbinski had stepped down from the franchise (though I like to think I would have known had this movie been a sequel to the original). There's a generally hazy pacing to the movie, and the tone is often miles off, but this was a frequent affliction of the second and third movies (and even, occasionally, "Curse of the Black Pearl").
Bizarrely, this is the second consecutive film to feature a central female character who loses her father, and than ends the movie stranded on a remote island. Is this an allusion to something?
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