It shot for mediocrity and hit the target.

Rating: Null/10 (14 July 2003)

Half the time, the movie is entertaining, the rest of the time it's just annoying. The "plot twists" are tedious and not too terribly clever. A lot of the jokes just plain suck. Orlando Bloom especially and most of the cast in general tend to be a bit wooden, but then they don't really have a lot to work with. The plot is shameless adventure movie boilerplate. And most of the time it just feels like a Jerry Bruckheimer movie - occasionally clever but mostly forehead-slappingly tedious dialogue, excessive flash in the action scenes, and the requisite happy ending. So what was entertaining? This has been said millions of times before, but Johnny Depp. Maybe it was his entrance (one of the few genuinely funny gags) but generally he has a certain drunken stylishness to him. And his overdone costuming reminds you periodically not to take the whole production to seriously.
Overall, it's a more brightly colored Armageddon with a less annoying romantic sideplot and none of the tedious flag-waving.