Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides Movie Review

On Stranger Tides is the fourth instalment in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. The film brings back Captain Jack Sparrow in another adventure full of danger and mystery. But, this instalment might be the weakest of the four.

On stranger Tides brings nothing new to the table. In fact, it brought less. The film has less humor, less action and an even lesser plot. It has become a boring voyage. And even Captain Jack can’t save this ship from going down.

There are a lot of factors that made the film bad. These things were not found in the first three films, or if they were, they were minimal. The first thing is the story. It was not written well. There are a lot of plot holes and leaves you asking a lot of questions. And by the end of the film, you will ask the same question Blackbeard asked, “Is that it?” certain things were not explained in the film. Like has Jack been to the fountain before all of this, or who was that man who got picked up by the fishermen in the beginning of the film and what happened to the mermaid and the clergy man?

The film has a great cast. But the main problem is that they have no chemistry together. Johnny Depp is now in the center of the film. All eyes are now focused on him while the rest are just literally co-stars. This is one thing that made the film bad. All eyes were on Jack, even if he is funny, he doesn’t appear top be funny anymore. Depp played him very well but it is still not good enough. Unlike in the previous films, Jack was just the glue that binds them together, but we all had equal focus to all the characters like Will, Elisabeth and Barbossa. We even took notice of Gibbs, the man with the parrot and even the monkey. Now, the rest of the cast are just forgettable.

Penelope Cruz does not share a romantic, even just a hint, of chemistry with Johnny Depp. They are both great actors but they don’t have that spark we all look for. This time, even Barbossa and Jack don’t have chemistry. The two were perfect friends and enemies in the previous films. Now, they are mere acquaintances that we tend to neglect. For the main villain, Blackbeard is not a pirate all pirates fear. He may be described like that but we don’t see it in film. Ian McShane portrayed the character well, but the script failed to really show his dark side. He just tends to scare us with controlling the ropes in the ship, but he has no psychological effect on the audience. For the two new cast members that were to replace Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley, they have great chemistry but they are not well used in the film. They appear to be glimpses on camera. Their story is not laid out and at times forgotten. They become one of those skeletons that may have a purpose but is just too low a purpose that we can forget them.

The effects for this film are no longer that great. The mermaids were created pretty well but there are times that they tend to blur out on screen. The details are not shown, unlike the first three. Even the physical effects are no longer exciting. Climbing on rooftops or on trees, running around and the sword fights has become boring. These things are still part of why the movie was bad.

The film started great. It started with a mystery that tends to build the story. Then when we get to see Jack for the first time, we got even more excited. In the King’s chambers, the action sequence was good. But when the scenes were at sea, the film started its downward fall to being bad. There may be a part where I got excited again. That was in the Mermaid battle. But after that, nothing exciting happened. Even the short scene at the end didn’t add to the betterment of the film.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is a film that should have been a great adventure but took us on a wild goose chase and dropped us off at the fountain of disappointment. It has laughs but not as many as before. Before we could laugh at Jack as he picks different hats, sadly, not anymore. This film has a short sailing period and is the worst of the four films. They tend to make a fifth and a sixth, I hope they make better than this. I give it 5 out of 10.