Dull, tedious adventure that wastes talent, imagination, and production design

Rating: 2/10 (5 June 2017)

Pirates of the Caribbean returns with its fifth installment and a minor reboot of cast with Kaya Scodelario and Brenton Thwaites joining the team.
Salazar's revenge is a very handsome film to look at, the special effects and production design are extremely fine. It is also a very expensive film - it genuinely looks like a lot of money was spent making it. The script is better written than some films and the music is very good.
However all of these good intentions are squandered on a film that is stiflingly, witheringly, perishingly dull. It's SO boring. I cannot recall ever being so bored in a cinema.
Part of the blame has to lie with the jokes and witty wordplay that just fall utterly flat. The wit is sub-Carry-On level, the innuendo is cringe-worthy, and everything is delivered without any form of comedic timing. In a film that is thought of as a comedy adventure, this raised exactly two thin smiles.
The first half of the film contains two huge action sequences, which are elaborately staged, filled with excellent stunts and one hugely imaginative guillotine gag that is genuinely inspired. But they too fall utterly flat. Dull, boring, unexciting - every minute of action is played for laughs, but these sequences are not remotely funny. It is telling that as the plot begins to overpower the film, these sort of sequences disappear to be replaced by death-by-cgi action sequences. It is a waste of the talents of the stunt team, and the production designers who are ultimately overwhelmed other by elements of the production.
The series' convoluted mythology has tied itself in complicated knots. So it falls to the actors to routinely explain to the audience what is going on and why, which has the unfortunate effect of reducing the screen time available to serve character. All of the characters, with the exception of Sparrow, are very poorly served.
Which brings us to the other major problem with the film: Captain Jack Sparrow. Sparrow was always an acquired taste, the over-the-top mannerisms and drunken acting entranced some viewers and alienated others. While he was largely well served by the first film, he's just became more and more annoying as the film series has continued. As the plots got more complicated, as the cast numbers ballooned, the audiences were expected to find in Depp and his performance all the film's entertainment: look, here's Jack scared of a monkey; look here's Jack drunkenly running away from a fight; look here's Jack trying to romance a 'lovely'.
Jack Sparrow was always a pathetic individual, a useless pirate who somehow, often accidentally, always against his wishes, saves the day. The hero of the first film was Orlando Bloom's Will Turner, not Johnny Depp's pirate. Depp was the light relief.
Thing is, as the series' plot disappears up its own wazoo with plot convolution atop convolution, and all the other characters exist solely to explain the story, all the film has left is to deploy Sparrow, in the hope he is funny enough to carry the film. He isn't, not by a long way. He simply drains the life out of the film. It is a tiresome, annoying performance.
Bardem is adequate in a one-dimensional role. Geoffrey Rush is phoning in his performance, we've seen this hundreds of times before. Brenton Thwaites is Orlando Bloom bland so he's actually a fine fit for this series. Kaya Scodelario is, by far, the best thing in this film. She is an appealing presence, and she is a bright star in an ocean of misery.
Despite all the above criticism I have yet to address the single worst offense in the film's litany of failings: the celebrity cameo. So it is that Paul McCartney appears in a cameo so cringy, so toe- curlingly awful, you'd think it was a Ricky Gervais sketch. McCartney is so bad he actually makes Depp look good for a moment. It is a performance so irredeemably awful it makes David Beckham's appearance in King Arthur look Oscar-worthy.
An end credits sequence hints at yet more Pirates to come. Let's hope not. This is the foul death rattle from a wheezing corpse of a franchise that should have been declared dead many, many years ago.
This is a film so unsure of itself it is called something completely different in the UK to the rest of Europe for no apparent reason. It is a film that seems content to waste huge amounts of money and talent on an overly complex and unfunny script. It is film that seems content with not even attempting to deliver anything close to entertainment to its audience. It is a film where there is, literally, a shark jumping sequence. It is a film where the story revolves around a trident that, when eventually found, has two prongs.
Two prongs does not make a right. Please, please, don't make another one.