ON STRANGER TIDES treads no new waters

Rating: 7/10 (20 May 2011)

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES is quite a misleading title in many ways. First off, the movie no longer takes place in the Caribbean. While it never actually says which bodies of water this movie takes place in, the two countries involved are England and Spain, so it's safe to say we've moved to the Mediterranean Sea. And second, ON STRANGER TIDES treads nothing but familiar waters.
One thing that OST does do that the previous trilogy did not was to make Jack Sparro—sorry. Captain Jack Sparrow—the protagonist of the film. Take a moment and think: Who was the main character in THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL? It wasn't Jack; it was Will Turner. Will was on a journey to save Elizabeth, and Jack was merely his means to an end. Jack was never really a good guy. He's a pirate, after all. He's out for himself and toys with the characters actually involved with the story for his own personal amusement, only to succumb to his conscience and help save the day. But having Jack as an outside character—with us not knowing his ultimate intentions until the very end—was what lead him to be one of the most recognizable characters of this generation. But he's not a protagonist.
Not all of Captain Jack's charisma is gone. He's still an entertaining character, but the mystery of what he's going to do next just isn't there anymore. I can't really blame Depp for this, as he pulls off Sparrow like he was born for it. But the writers just to have put him in a spot where he doesn't belong. Jack's intentions still aren't clear from the get-go, but the movie sets it up to be his story. And that causes some narrative problems.
The movie itself is easily the worst of the series. To put that in perspective, I LOVE all three previous movies. Even AT WORLD'S END I adore. They're this generation's INDIANA JONES. While some may say it's better than 2 or 3, it doesn't really hold true to the original.
Story-wise, it's pretty straightforward. Multiple groups of people are trying to find the Fountain of Youth for their own reasons. We're just seeing who's going to get there first and who's going to get what they want. Simple as that. But, as Captain Jack says so eloquently in one of his many clever, fourth wall-breaking comments, "It's not so much the destination so much as the journey." Too bad the journey isn't all that interesting.
While the trailer points out both zombies and mermaids, only the mermaids hold any plot significance. The zombies are there because. . . well, why not? The first movie had a crew that turned into skeletons in the moonlight, and the second and third movie had a crew of mutated humans who looked like sea monsters. So why not make the crew of the bad guy's ship "zombie-fied"? I will say, though, the mermaid scene was pretty damn brilliant. Too bad it's the most original and interesting part of the film, and it comes at about half-way in.
Probably my biggest complaint is that many things that happen in OST just seem to be far too reminiscent of the original movie. The first escape scene is far too much like the one in the first movie, and the first sword fight is far too familiar to that of Sparrow vs. Turner—they even fight up on planks on beams of the roof just like in the first movie. Even the final battle takes place in a cavern with rays of light coming down in patches from the holes all around. It's all too familiar and very uninspired—not to say it isn't enjoyable, but it's nothing new. Other than the mermaid sequence, nothing stands out. There's no fight with people morphing back and forth from skeletons. There's no fight on a rolling water wheel. There's no fight on ships trapped in a whirlpool.
One thing the movie never does is become bad. It's just disappointing how mediocre it ends up being. The movie is still enjoyable and has a lot of that humor from the original three. The characters are still fun to follow, and the locations are gorgeous. But it just doesn't go on past decent most of the time and never beyond good. Is it worth checking out? Yeah. Despite my negative criticisms, the movie's still fun to watch. Just don't expect the same magic that the first three had.