Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

Rating: 4/10 (17 November 2013)

"On Stranger Tides" marks the fourth film in the Pirates saga. Except this one does not star Orlando Bloom or Keira Knightly. It is Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush reprising their roles as the infamous Captain Jack Sparrow and the now peg-legged Barbossa. New comers to the film are Ian McShane as Blackbeard, and Penelope Curz as his daughter Angelica. Personally I was sick and tired of the Pirate movies after the third installment, but when I saw the trailer for "On Stranger Tides" I was very curious to see it. Then the trailer played over and over again and I could already tell that the film was going to be awful. But I still went to see it.
Jack Sparrow (Depp) is in possession of a map that leads the way to the Fountain of Youth. Barbossa (Rush) accompanies Sparrow for the journey, but with just the intention of killing Blackbeard (McShane). On the way they meet beautiful, yet insanely vicious mermaids. A few invulnerable zombies, who make voodoo dolls that really work, and the Spanish Monarch.
Johnny Depp does nothing special with his character, he does tone down the drunken walk, and slur but he does all the same facial features, and wise-cracking jokes. Depp has been disappointing me with his movie choices lately. I enjoyed Rango, but "Alice in Wonderland" was just an awful movie with a big cast, and the Gothic touch of Tim Burton, and it failed miserably. Then he made "The Tourist" and how that movie got nominated for any award is beyond me. "The Tourist" is the perfect example of a movie not to make. The cast helped in no way to pull the story through, it is extremely boring during their monologues, and whoever wrote the film made the twist ending extraordinary stupid. Yeah thats the word to use, STUPID! Come on Johnny step up your game.
Penelope Cruz adds nothing special to the screen besides her beautifulness, and every time she spoke I wanted her to stop talking. I have not seen a lot of Penelope Cruz films that I personally took a liking to, but I thought she was truly exceptional in Vanilla Sky, which is on my top ten favorite films. Ian McShane was dreadful as Blackbeard, it seemed like he was always yelling. Mcshane showed is comedic talent in "Hot Rod" which is a funny movie just over the top at some points. I heard he is amazing in HBO's "Deadwood". I also enjoyed him in "Agent Cody Banks". But when we got to the finale of this film I could not have been happier to see these characters off the screen. I was just kidding about "Agent Cody Banks".
How could I forget Geoffrey Rush, who has just come off of the Oscar winning film "The Kings Speech", and decides to put back on the pirate costume for a fourth time. He is peg-legged in this one, and has aged drastically. Rush was inexplicably untalented this time around. Which sucks because he is what drove most of the films for me. Barbossa's cameo at the end of the second film is probably one of the best parts to me of that film. But none of his scene were done well in this one. That brings me to the director Rob Marshall, who was way off the mark with this film. His pervious movies include "Memoir's of a Geisha", "Chicago", and "Nine" so its safe to say he was trying something new, but failed with the whole two hours and fifteen minutes of the film. The best of the series is "The Curse of the Black Pearl" and continues in order to get progressively worse. I give Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides a 4 out of 10.