Entertaining but faulted installment that will please fans of the franchise

Rating: 7/10 (28 May 2011)

As a fan of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, I was anticipating this movie ever since the title was announced. I finally got around to seeing it yesterday and found that while I did enjoy it, it lacked the adventurous qualities of the first 3 films and had some flaws that really should have been fixed.
To keep the story brief and not give away spoilers, the film takes place after the third movie and follows Captain Jack Sparrow searching for the Fountain of Youth only to discover that a feared pirate named Blackbeard and his daughter, Angelica are after it too.
Naturally, Johnny Depp gives a great performance as Jack Sparrow. It's one of the defining roles of his career and one of the main reasons these movies were great. The other positives of this movie are an interesting new character in Angelica, played well by the gorgeous Penelope Cruz and she has and interesting relationship with Jack, an opening scene that pulls you in right away and good ending.
The negatives of the movie however are as followed. Ian McShane as Blackbeard. While he gives a solid performance, he simply doesn't fill the shoes of Barbossa, Davy Jones or Beckett from the previous installments. The film lacks a lot of the sword fights or ship battles that you'd expect from a movie like this and the movie also contains a subplot surrounding mermaids that is almost completely disposable. I also personally missed Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightly, but I can respect the writers for starting out on something more fresh.
Overall, the film has flaws and is the weakest Pirates of the Caribbean film so far, in my opinion, but it certainly does provide solid entertainment. Whatever problems exist here are likely just the fault of the new production crew. Rob Marshall is no Gore Verbinski. Just don't expect too much from On Stranger Tides and I'm sure you'll enjoy it.
7/10.