Little Mermaid of the Caribbean

Rating: 6/10 (30 September 2013)

"Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" meant closure to the franchise for director Gore Verbinski, who successfully entered the animation genre afterward. The one who took over four years later was Rob Marshall, the director of Best Picture winner "Chicago", "Memoirs of a Geisha" and "Nine". While the general perception of the franchise is that they got pretty much worse as they progressed, I have to disagree. I don't think any of the four films are really great movie magic, but all make for a decent watch. It's just that the fresh and new factor decreased with every movie.
In any case, with Verbinski's, Bloom's and Knightley's leaving, it was also a bit of a fresh start for the fourth film. Sam Claflin and the mysterious Astrid Bergès-Frisbey sort of replace Bloom and Knightley and show us a human-mermaid love story, while Ian McShane joined the cast as the voodoo-loving main antagonist and Penélope Cruz enters the scene as his daughter and a former love interest to Captain Sparrow. Back on board are some of the old names such as Kevin McNally and, of course, Geoffrey Rush as that old rotten pirate bastard who's clearly still having a time as great as the one I had watching him. This man's always a delight and gives his characters a special and unique note.
Storywise, everybody's on the hunt for the mystical Fountain of Youth this time and as we witness their pursuit, we see all the factors we liked in the previous films: the pompous costumes, the well-crafted makeup, the spectacular special effects, the great deal of sword fighting and here and there an actually funny one-liner from Mr. Depp. If you're willing to enjoy all of these and can accept a story that has its holes here and there, this is one to watch. The films have risen in running time constantly since the first, but this one takes a huge step back and is even shorter than "Curse of the Black Pearl" 10 years ago. Nonetheless it started dragging occasionally from the 60-minute mark onwards and they could have cut it down to the 2-hour mark without hurting the film at all, possibly even improving it.
The fifth installment of the series will be directed by the Norwegian duo which brought us Max Manus and, recently, Oscar nominated foreign language film Kon-Tiki centered on Thor Heyerdahl, which was probably the main reason behind casting them. It's still another three years until it comes out, but I'm already curious about the approach they'll be giving it. My guess is it will be quality-wise similar to films 1 to 4.