A leap of faith cruelly abused

Rating: 2/10 (24 May 2011)

When previews for the latest Pirates movies started showing in theaters, I noticed a general rumble around me and on at least three occasions heard someone comment to a fellow, "Really? Again?" For a long time I boycotted the sequels to the original Pirates, but I finally watched them and they weren't THAT bad. So with this one, I thought I'd give it a go.
Not awful, but certainly not up to the Pirates standard.
There were so many things about the first Pirates movie that made it spectacular. The music was exciting, the writing was subtle and effective, the humor was 100% on point and the action was new and entertaining. As the 'trilogy' went on, some of those things dwindled, but there was always intelligent writing (even if it did get convoluted at points) and there was a sense of the magnificent in them that I always really enjoyed.
The fourth Pirates did not manage to tap any of these great wells. The music was tired and in the background. At one point, early in the film, we get a rehash of the original score which livened things up for a good six seconds before the score just... stopped (apparently Jack is losing his finesse).
The writing that made the first movie so enjoyable is almost nonexistent here and it really hurts the development of new characters. Blackbeard, the replacement villain, is underwritten, under-motivated, and his 'powers' are unexplained. In the first movies at least when something out of the ordinary happened, it had SOME explanation! Cruz's character is a weak replacement of Elizabeth, who managed to have a strong background and base character that evolved over the course of the movie. We don't know where Cruz's character is from, what she would be doing on a day-to-day basis if this 'quest' weren't underway. We don't find anything out about her at all except ambiguous hints at a past with Jack. It's boring. Will Turner's replacement is a good looking religious-type who stands up against Blackbeard's brutality... with no real consequences. In the original there was a sense of danger for Will when he stood against Barbossa to save his lady fair. You actually *believed* Barbossa would kill him, or make Elizabeth walk the plank. In this, there is just no palpable danger.
Humor? Very little.
Action! I'm not usually critical of action sequences, but there was one fight scene in this film, taking up three to four minutes, that actually had me bored because it was almost a step-for-step rehash of the fight scene between Jack and Will Turner in the blacksmith's. Really?! The action in this film wasn't new or exciting or smooth. It was just... boring. Someone else described Jack's escapes as 'going from James Bond to Austin Powers' and I couldn't agree more. Jack doesn't really seem able to control his own destiny in this movie, more of a sufferer of others' will than an agent of his own and that's just sad.
The sense of the magnificent is totally absent in this movie. That may relieve some people who found an expanding goddess exploding into crabs or a ship-battle amidst a maelstrom too far, but it really detracts from the feel of the movie. It's not that incredible things don't happen... they just don't *feel* incredible. The mermaid scene, for example, would have been haunting in a previous film. For this one, it just seemed boring. (Possible spoiler, but nothing that affects the plot) There was a completely idiotic moment where Jack and Barbossa are trying to balance their weight in Ponce De Leon's ship (which looks as if it has somehow become embedded in the side of a cliff well above sea level... again, explanation writers?), but then you realize they're in the captain's quarters at one end of the ship and it wouldn't be teetering that way even if it wasn't already established that it's BURIED in a cliff! The whole movie was atmoshperically gloomy. There was no sunshine, no Caribbean blue waters, nothing to really excite the eye. No danger, no real excitement, no wonder. Just... unremarkable in every way. I really blame the writers for the majority of this failure, but the director had fault in some areas too. Put some heart into your work, people.