Same old crap, another 'Pirates' sequel.

Rating: 5/10 (24 September 2017)

Wow that was so...umm...honestly, I forgot what I just saw. It was so forgettable. It blends in with everything I've already seen so many times in the last four movies. Look, I liked the first film from 2003; I find it to be a very fun and entertaining flick. Even the second movie I enjoyed, not as much as the first but I still thought it was fun enough. Then every installment since the third has been more or less the same crap now. Taking what was cool and exciting in the first two movies and recycling the hell out of them with an over abundance of characters, convoluted plot lines and a convenient series of events that lead the action sequences along. By the fifth time of seeing it all yet again, I'm just done. These movies have completely stopped giving me a reason to care at this point. Not even Johnny Depp seems to care anymore, yet he's basically supposed to be the driving force with these movies. But you can just tell that his heart is not in it anymore. The look in his eyes screams, "Alright, I'll do it but if that check doesn't clear I swear to God...".
These later sequels, including this one, I can't say are terrible or even all that bad by any means. However, they are wildly unambitious being comprised of everything we have seen several times before in the previous installments of the franchise. The series has simply run out of steam. Why the studios insist on pursuing more sequels now is unbeknownst to me. Aside from simply being unnecessary and forgettable, there are some legitimate issues I have with the film. Such as, like I had mentioned before, too many characters. Pointless characters at that. There are whole character arcs and subplots that are introduced only to be dropped right smack dab in the middle of the film, making it a total waste of my time since there was no satisfying conclusion or payoff in any way. The acting, for the most part, is fine. Although no one stands out or even seems to be giving this movie much effort at all, especially Depp as I had said earlier. Javier Bardem does seem to be having a bit of fun as the baddie, but that's far from coming close to carrying this movie at all. There is a replacement type character that is basically a stand-in for Orlando Bloom, Brenton Thwaites, who plays Will Turner's son. And Thwaites is...awful. This is the second movie I've seen try to force him into being an action lead and it does not work at all. He has zero chemistry with everyone on screen, including what time he shares with his "love interest". I mean, seriously, I believe a block of wood holds more charisma than this guy. He seems to be typecast as the pretty boy bad ass, but he's not bad ass and his character is so incompetent and honestly relatively pointless to have been included in the story in the grand scheme of things. I am not joking, if he was cut from this script, the story would almost be no different. A few easy rewrites and he could be entirely vanished from this movie without a single trace.
Another thing that bothered me was that characters seemed to just be able to get exactly where they need to be without any explanation whatsoever in order for the plot to continue. We'll get entire pointless character introductions to characters that will only cease to be in the film by the halfway mark, but God forbid we get an actual explanation as to how the villains somehow always seem to navigate as to where the protagonists are; among other slight nagging plot holes and anachronisms.
If I have any positives to say about this movie...85% of the effects are solid. There is a bit of awkward green screening and Javier Bardem's hair...yeah, why did that need to be CGI? Whatever. Umm...let's see, what else can I say is decent about the movie? It wasn't nearly three hours long. I will give this movie a little bit of an edge over the last couple of sequels because this sticks closer to only being about two hours long rather than pushing the screen time to suck up as many hours out of the day as possible. In that regard, this is probably the best sequel since the second film...maybe. Other than that, this movie is stale. It's a series that is trying so hard to keep on trucking, but this bitch is long dead.
I suppose if you're a big fan of all the other movies and you're curious then I guess this movie is fine to check out on Netflix or a cheap rental. Like I said, it's technically not a bad movie, it will be something you can watch and pay little mind to I guess if you want to try to pass the time. But at the same time, there are so many better options if you're in that sort of situation so I really don't see this movie being all that necessary. Just watch the first movie again if you want to watch a Pirates adventure; that's a hundred times better than putting this on. Granted, I doubt you'll be mad or hate having spent five bucks to rent this if you chose to, but what would be the point when you have four other movies that do the exact same thing as this movie. Two of which do those things in an actual lively and energized way. So in my opinion, you can probably skip this one and be just fine.