A Bit Blah

Rating: 6/10 (19 March 2018)

Continuing my plan to watch every Johnny Depp movie in order, I come to Pirates Of The Carribean: On Stranger Tides.
Due to his good relationship with Walt Disney's chairman of 38 years, Dick Cook Johnny Depp agreed in pricipal to star in this film before "there was a script or anything in place." After Cook was fired, Depp said his enthusiasm for the fourth Pirates movie had reduced after Cook left the project. He said, the only reason he agreed to it was because he trusted Cook, who supported him while "others at the studio were less than enthusiastic about my interpretation of the character, Dick was there from the first moment. He trusted me." He regained his enthusiasm by recieving a paycheck with a lot of zeroes in front of the decimal point.
It is about what you'd expect. It is over long (a very long-winded 137 minutes) and totally over the top. It starts off well enough as Captain Jack Sparrow impersonates a British judge, is chased through London, makes out with Dame Judy Dench and discovers someone is attempting to impersonate him, while recruiting the crew needed to man a ship. The movie is ok until they set sail. Then it all gets a bit dull.
Blackbeard played by Ian McShane is ok, but is not really threatening, Penelope Cruz is fine and has good chemistry with Depp, which we knew from Blow. Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swan (Kiera Knightley) do not return (Instead of Will and Elizabeth, we get a love subplot involving a priest and a mermaid.) but Captain Barbossa does, but he is bland and timid here. In fact he is pretty pointless, and only returns so audiences know more than two returning characters (Captain Jack's right-hand man, Gibbs is also back) Keith Richards turns up again, playing Captain Jack Sparrow's father too.
Rob Marshall's direction is competent and, from a technical standpoint, there's nothing wrong with the various action sequences but it is just so blah!! The fight sequences are all impossible leaping and fast cutting, its confusing and uninvolving. The story does not engage, the characters are bland and the whole thing reeks of being a money-grab. Yet, I didn't hate it. It was watchable but nothing more!!
POTC: On Stranger Tides grossed $241 million at the domestic box office to become the 5th highest-grossing movie of 2009. Whilst it was the lowest grossing Pirates movie, it was the third Depp movie to cross 1 billion dollars worldwide
While filming in London in October 2010, Johnny Depp received a letter from a local nine-year old schoolgirl, telling him her classmates needed help to "mutiny" against her teachers. He turned up with no warning at the school in full Sparrow outfit.