While the tremendous success of the original Pirates of the Caribbean movies have led fans to expect another thrilling epic, On Stranger Tides, falls short of spectacular.

Rating: 5/10 (11 June 2011)

While the tremendous success of the original Pirates of the Caribbean movies have led fans to expect another thrilling epic, the latest installment, On Stranger Tides, falls short of spectacular.
Whether you enjoy this movie or not depends entirely on whether you enjoyed the first three. If you loved the first three, you will find this movie very shallow and even slightly lame in comparison. It lacks the cutlass-sharp wit, panoramic sets, exhilarating fight scenes and jaw-dropping concepts that made the original trilogy so spectacular, and instead offers a sort of half-hearted attempt at fumbling with the impersonation of Jerry Buckheimer's masterpiece. The soundtrack is still that of the glorious Hanz Zimmer, but the drive is gone. Some scenes momentarily boosted the edge and intensity like that present in the original trilogy, but these moments are not terribly frequent. Although Johnny Depp is wonderful, he is not any where near as wonderful as he has been previously, and really the entire film misses a mark set far too high by the brilliant original trilogy.