I love Jack Sparrow---let me make that clear. He's one of my favorite hero-esque characters of all times. I mean, honestl--nah, I won't start that. But this movie...meh. I mean, it had really, truly funny moments, some great Jack lines, cute guys (hey, I'm a girl, but I will be fair--Penelope Cruz was beautiful), great sword fights, but--it wasn't really brilliant as a whole. Let me elaborate:
It was slow. It took too long to get going. And as much as I love Jack's antics--they were too silly. Too much like movies 2 and 3 and not enough like movie 1. Mind you, some of his antics were exceedingly clever, but the story sort of plodded along. It took too long to get to Florida and then the mermaids took way too long and then getting to the fountain was a bit long--it just plodded. I started writing this review in my head during the movie and actually re-did my hair once while fixing it for about 1/4 of the movie. Moreover, they had too many characters. I mean, the priest was cute, but what was the point in him? The mermaid? Honestly, they could have used the mermaid without him and without making underdeveloped religious comments through two underdeveloped characters who you don't really care about. And then there was Scrum, the dumb pirate who was supposed to be the new Pintel and Ragetti ("Here, poppet. We know you're 'ere, poppet.") who wasn't really funny and was really stupid. The real shame is that the other characters, Barbossa, Jack, and Angelica (Cruz) were not as deep as they should have been. I mean, they had some great opportunities at the end to get really personal and emotional, but they didn't. At all. Basically, there were too many characters and too much plodding. Also, the lighting sucked.
Let's see...the movie was also really dark. And I don't mean lighting. There was a voodoo doll, lots of deaths (and I don't mean just stabbing someone during a fight), sacrifices, brutal murders, magic--it was just darker than expected. Darker than the first three.
Also, the music. Unimpressed. I love that Eric Whitacre was involved, but if the music wasn't directly from the other three movies, it was a remix. No new themes that I could detect, just theme and variation. Now, while I do like the variations (they really are pretty neat) I just expected more. At least ONE new theme. Preferably two or thee. Even in "Mermaids," the track that Whitacre helped with, I could hear part of "At World's End" from the third movie. It's truly annoying.
That all being said, it had some great moments. Barbossa was great, as usual, the sword fighting was really entertaining, all the fight scenes were great and funny, and there were quite a few references to the other movies and the ride. My favorite was that Ponce de Leon's room was the room from the ride, the one with all the treasure. Stellar. The Revenge was a fairly cool, okay, very cool, ship, and the idea of ships in a bottle was very neat. And admittedly, I wasn't annoyed that Penelope Cruz and Ian McShane were in this. They were surprisingly good. McShane played a farily evil and cruel bad guy. I mean, he wasn't totally villainous, but he was a bit scary. I liked him.
I really don't have much more to say. The visuals were good, Gibbs was funny, the Spanish was awesome, the Fountain was very interesting--it wasn't bad. I wouldn't recommend seeing it in 3D or IMAX, but I'd wait till it comes to your local discount theater. Fun, but not totally great.
Grade: B
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