What happened to this movie?

Rating: 2/10 (29 February 2012)

Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush and Penelope Cruz as actors, Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott as screenwriters, Hans Zimmer as a composer, a book that is said to be totally okay as a base - what can go wrong in a movie like this? Well... everything. There was not a single moment at which I really connected with either the story or any of the characters. While I went out of "At world's end" after three hours feeling like it had been at most one and a half, I started looking at my watch twenty minutes into this movie, thinking "When will this get really started?"
This film was clearly aimed at a younger audience than the previous ones, and so were most of the jokes. All in all there's a definite feeling of having seen it all before, with a predictable plot and soulless acting. What hurt only a little in comparison to everything else: the secret heroine of the previous movies, the Black Pearl, almost didn't appear at all.
I was also disappointed by the music. Well, Hans Zimmer is always above average, but there's nothing new at all to this score, unlike in parts 2 and 3 that got new themes each.
In my opinion, if you liked the previous films, stick to Gore Verbinski rather than the Pirates of the Caribbean. It seems to be only about the money now.