Less chaotic and confusing than some of the earlier entries in the series

Rating: 6/10 (6 June 2012)

Currently a captain without a ship - the Black Pearl having been shrunk and placed inside a sealed bottle, at least for the time being - the inimitable Jack Sparrow finds himself impressed on a vessel, captained by the Spanish pirate Blackbeard (Ian McShane), that is hot on the trail of Ponce de Leon's famed but ever elusive Fountain of Youth. Meanwhile, a British contingent, led by peg-legged "privateer, not pirate" Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush), is on the same mission, though he claims to be doing it not for personal enrichment but for king and country.
"Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides," with a screenplay by Ted Elliott and Terry Rosio and direction by Rob Marshall, keeps the storyline fairly simple and streamlined this time out, avoiding the overstuffed, convoluted plotting that often made the earlier installments all but impossible to follow. Even Johnny Depp himself, in the spirit of the enterprise, seems to have toned down some of the more flamboyant qualities of his earlier performances and appears to be relishing playing a pirate who is less in charge of his own fate and more at the mercy of the other characters this time around. Yet, he's still able to land a sharp-tongued barb with the best of them, whether it be against Blackbeard, Barbossa or Angelica, the feisty love interest played by the beautiful Penelope Cruz.
As is par for the course, the movie runs on far too long, padding out its length with a sappy romance between a preacher-man and a mermaid and a few too many distended swordfights for the movie's (and the audience's) good, but, overall, this turns out to be one of the less top-heavy and heavy-handed of the "Pirates" films.