Checked off the to-see bucket list ... same way this film was made.

Rating: 1/10 (21 February 2018)

No spoilers here. But, even if they were, they wouldn't really be spoilers because ... in fact ... that would be impossible. You've seen it all before.
Why did I watch this? Because, like many other people, I really liked the first films. Just big fun. And so I figured, hey, they would do that, right?
Disney: evidently when they sat down to figure out why people like the first films, they got lost in their corporate, accountant driven, audience surveyed calculations, and decided it wasn't acting, or storyline that people wanted, but special effects. And that's all this is, from beginning to end. Resulting in, simply, a CGI-generated piece of ... uh ... whatever. With a plot line tidying up (more like scraping up and disposing) loose ends from previous films.
Where to begin: First: Johnny Depp -- who is admittedly the main reason the other films were interesting -- had absolutely nothing to work with in this script. He had nothing more to say. And he was evidently not interested in putting any personal investment into it. So all he did was crack the few not particularly interesting jokes he was handed, grimace a bit, and his principal acting skills went into scenes where he had to pretend he was staggering around drunk. And I'm not sure he was really pretending, because in later scenes, he still moved, and spoke, as though he was hammered. But I'm going to assume Disney had a clause in his contract against that, so maybe he was just severely hung over. Funny no more.
Plot? There was no plot. It was more like an IKEA instruction manual of how to make a (not so) cheap, mass-made and disposable consumer item. Just the usual package of some unlucky souls on an unlucky ship, trying to kill Jack. And the evil regular guys? They didn't even get enough time to be really evil, developing their bad guy thing, with maybe some time for them to develop a bit of humanity to make them a bit interesting. Just ... forget it.
I watched it. Yes I did. All the way to the end. Not expecting anything after the first 10 minutes ... going into a sort of catharsis, not caring, bored, but stuck watching it with the idea that ... what the heck ... I'd seen the others so I might as well see this out to the end. Like paying final respects.
Message for Johnny Depp: OK, you get paid a lot for this. Big, big bucks. But, frankly, you don't need to do this now. You obviously don't get any enjoyment out of it, other than maybe whatever Disney's catering service has to offer. Frankly, unless they can come up with a script that involves actual acting, some real character development or story line, and little or no CGI, let it die in peace.
It's over. I'm done with this franchise. Captain Jack Sparrow has obviously now become just a canned, makeup department effort good enough for keeping alive the Halloween costume industry tie-ins for another year.