Pirates of the Caribbean: I'm swimming against the tide.

Rating: 4/10 (30 May 2011)

So it's the first blockbuster movie weekend of the summer. And the reports are already in, it's official, "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" has made a gazillion dollars and people are packing the theaters to see it. It's a hit!
I just wish I could share the enthusiasm. But I can't.
It's not that I don't love bravura over-the-top swashbuckling Saturday-matinée popcorn action movies, because I do. I've watched "Raiders of the Lost Ark" more times than I can remember, and I still love it. "Ironman" was a great fun movie, I loved the first two Brendan Fraser "Mummy" movies, I even enjoyed "National Treasure." I don't believe that a movie has to be profound, or reveal some inner truth, or break new ground, or even make sense in a logical way in order to be enjoyable.
But I do believe that an action movie has to have more than a bunch of fight sequences strung together at random, that it has to have characters you care about at least on a superficial level, and if the plot doesn't make sense, it at least has to be good enough to make you suspend disbelief for the duration of the movie.
"On Stranger Tides" failed on all these levels. Oh, Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow has his moments; he's cute, and clever, and silly in a lovable way/lovable in a silly way. But when all is said and done, at least for me he wasn't, in this movie, a character I was more than mildly amused by. And that wasn't enough to keep me invested in the movie.
Penelope Cruz makes a fetching Pirate (Piratette? Piratess?), but I just never bought into the back-story, which is that she's Blackbeard the arch-Pirate's daughter. She's pretty and she's fun to watch on screen, but there isn't enough plot/character to make me care about her.
There's a cute sub-plot involving a mermaid and a young male missionary, and as far as I was concerned, that was potentially the most interesting part of the movie. But it was a minor item, and the way it turned out was pre-ordained and obvious from the get-go.
Kevin McNally as Gibbs was actually the character that I felt was the most authentic, but he was just dragged along for the ride, as it were, and really didn't have a part in the action.
For the rest, there are Spaniards and British who swashbuckle and flash swords at appropriate moments in the movie, but that's all they're really there for.
I know I'm swimming against the tide in saying this, but for me the movie just didn't work. In the climactic action sequence at the end, I found myself more concerned with how cramped and uncomfortable I was starting to feel in my theater seat than in how the movie was going to end.
So, in the end, I really can't recommend "On Stranger Tides." My suggestion: if you're hankering for a good action popcorn flick, skip this movie and watch "Raiders of the Lost Ark," either of the first two Brendan Fraser "Mummy" movies, or check your cable channels for any other big-budget action movie of summers past.
...Or do something really original, and give the action flicks a miss; go spend some time with your family doing something more fun and more memorable on a beautiful summer weekend than watching a movie that is, in the end, predictable and forgettable.