Expensively made cheap entertainment

Rating: Null/10 (24 August 2011)

Pirates of the Caribbean is now officially a tetralogy joining the ranks of Rambo, Dennis the Menace, Scream, and Indiana Jones. Much like Indiana Jones or any other movieseries that overstays its welcome, Pirates began to wear thin with me after the second installment. Slapped together plots with phoned in performances really ruined what could have been a simple, enjoyable series of films. I'm no fan of Bruckheimer, since he's been recently ruining every good thing ever thought up, but there seem to be bigger forces at work in this particular set of movies.
On Stranger Tides is a complete reboot of the series – a few familiar faces, but really the original trilogy is a distant memory. While I am not the least bit sorry to see the old characters jettisoned, writers don't even pretend to explain Jack Sparrow's supposed ties to the Black Pearl and being out to sea for 10 years at a time in relation to the current storyline. What is it, 15 years in the future or so? They simply introduce new characters and do that annoying Star Wars: Episode 2 thing humorously reminiscing on scenes we will never have the displeasure of experiencing. Classic insult to the audience. I'd prefer a hazy, washed-out flashback, thankyouverymuch.
All that complaining aside, I rather enjoyed the film. It definitely did not leave anything for the audience to figure out and seemed to make up its own rules along the way (yeah, that's right, you need a mermaid tear, 2 goats, and a willing man and the fountain will give you 6 delicious plums that when baked into a flan will create a meal that will take 10 years off of your life. Also, you need a magic entrance to the fountain, but you can just walk on out of that thing through conventional means), but who cares. This series never pretended to be anything but popcorn shoveling fun. I just gagged a little bit admitting that.
Despite the CONSTANT chatter of the teenage population of Falmouth, Maine just an aside based on my sampling of the restaurants, Wal-Mart, and movie theater, I believe the median age of Falmouth to be around 14. Perhaps we should be looking for the fountain of youth there Where was I?
Despite the CONFUSED teenagers that needed to explain the plot of the movie to each other and wonder where Penelope Cruz was in the other films, I enjoyed the movie for what it was – expensively made cheap entertainment. I wonder if they can figure out how to make production cheaper to turn this into another Blondie or Django series.