A lot better than I expected

Rating: 8/10 (2 June 2017)

This movie was a lot better than I was expecting. Reviews of this movie have been pretty cynical and negative, but I don't think the negativity is deserved. This is a fun movie. A lot of the old cast returned for this film, and it bookends the series in a lovely way. It's not perfect, and we'll get into that below. But if you are looking for a fun adventure movie, with a lot of laughs, this movie fills all those check boxes.
Lets first get the negatives out of the way, which are few, but deserve mention. The two new leads in this film are rookies, and not strong enough as actors to carry this movie. They are adequate, but never succeed in convincing you that they deserve being in this movie, contrary to Orlando Bloom and Kyra Knightley in the past. Fortunately the old cast are able to bare the weight of the movie, with both Rush and Depp doing a great job.
There's a scene where they show a young Jack Sparrow, and as usual, the effect for that is not good. Please Hollywood, stop de-aging actors with CGI! It looks terrible. His mouth looked like it had just been pasted on. It was really weird and jarring. Not as jarring as CGI Peter Cushing in Rogue One, but pretty jarring none the less. There is no reason to do this with CGI. Just cast a young actor who looks enough like a young Depp and you're done. It's cheaper, and the audience will accept it more easily, instead of being distracted by a lousy effect.
The script is okay, although there is a lot of plot convenience, and a lot of stuff that defies physics. But I can look past that, because this is not a movie franchise that should be taken too seriously. The dialogue in the beginning is a bit stiff though, especially when the two new leads are basically telling the audience their backstories. Show, don't tell! (But don't show it with bad de-aging CGI!) Now for the positives, Depp does a great job. I thought that I would be bored of Jack Sparrow by now, but I guess not. Both he and Rush seemed to be having fun, and giving it their best. And it is fun watching these actors just having a lot of joy on set. The humor is also really on point. Most of the jokes work.
The action is pretty fantastic. I was amazed by some of the crazy action scenes that they came up with, especially during the very strong opening of the film. Yes, it is absurd and over the top, but there was a lot of practical stuff, and just good old stunt work. It was so much fun to watch. I feel that they could have ended the film perhaps with a big battle, but the ending we got instead sufficed.
The design of the ghost pirates and their ship is really well done. And the undead sharks (which you can see in the trailer) were pretty creepy. I also liked the quality of most of the special effects. The ships all look really good. The high production values are clearly on display. There's some green screening here and there, but I think the general audience will not even notice that. The set designs are fantastic, and there's just a lot of awesome practical stuff in the film.
So as you can tell, I had a lot of fun at this film. I was not disappointed in the slightest. Stick around till after the credits for the usual post credits scene. But I could be mistaken, but isn't this going to be the last PotC film? Then why are we getting another post credits teaser? And why does the post credits scene seem to contradict the finale of the movie? Ehh... whatever.