Review: Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

Greetings one and all, it is I, your most humble host, the Angry Webmaster. It’s been a while since my last movie review and so I thought I would take one in. Last night I went off to Chunky’s and saw Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.

This is the fourth movie in the franchise and the first one without Keira Knightly and Orlando Bloom. There are many reasons they didn’t appear, but in my opinion, the main reason is their story is finished and it’s time for a new one.

Now I’m going to say right here that there WILL be spoilers. Probably lots and lots of them, so if you don’t like to know what’s coming, leave. 🙂

For the rest of you, here goes.

I’ve written about Chunky’s before so I won’t go over it again. The crowd was good but I didn’t have to wait in line to buy my ticket this time. Dinner consisted of steak tips, medium, french fries, salad and beer. Sam Adams Lager if you must know.

Now the plot of this movie takes up where we last saw Captain Jack Sparrow, (Which he insists he be called), looking for the Fountain of Youth. In this film, he’s given up searching for it. Instead, he’s in London looking for whoever is impersonating him and masquerading as a judge in order to save the life of his former first mate, Joshamee Gibbs.

In his unique way, he manages to commute Gibbs’s sentence to life imprisonment instead of hanging and jumps into the prison wagon to tell him the plan. (He bribed the driver) The plan goes wrong when Jack and Gibbs arrive at the prison instead of outside London as Jack had expected. It turns out that Jacks nemesis, Captain Hector Barbossa, had also bribed the driver to make sure Captain Jack Sparrow was delivered to the prison.

Jack is brought before King George II and informed that the King would like Jack to guide an expedition to find the Fountain of youth before the Spanish do. Barbossa turns out to have become a privateer in the Kings service and also has lost Jack’s ship, the Black Pearl along with his right leg.

Jack is not interested and makes his escape in his usual flamboyant manner. He then starts searching for whoever is impersonating him with the intention of doing vile harm to said person.

Jack ends up in a tavern, (Big surprise that!), where the imposter is recruiting a crew for Captain Jack Sparrow. Jack finds the imposter and after a bit of swordplay discovers that it is his former lover Angelica. (Penelope Cruz), They have a discussion and Jack finds himself darted and drugged. When he wakes up he discovers that he has been Shanghaied and is on the Queen Anne’s Revenge, the ship of Edward Teach, more commonly known as Blackbeard. He also finds out that Angelica is the First Mate and Blackbeard’s daughter.

Jack isn’t to happy with this so he organizes a mutiny. It fails when Blackbeard shows up. He has a magic sword and several zombies and uses both to crush the mutiny. We also discover that Blackbeard has a missionary tied to the main mast. It’s not really clear why this man is there, (Or I missed the plot point), and I think the sub-plot with him was a complete waste, but more on that later. 🙂

After the failed mutiny, we found out that Blackbeard wants to drink from the Fountain of Youth, but needs several items. One of the items is a pair of silver chalices from the ship of Juan Ponce De Leon. Each chalice must have the water from the fountain and one chalice must have a tear from a mermaid. When a person drinks from the Chalice without the tear, all his remaining years are transferred to the person who drinks from the chalice with the mermaids tear.

Blackbeard, who is also practicing Voodoo, (See zombies), has a voodoo doll of Jack and uses it to control him. (Pay attention to the doll. It has a plot point)

To get a mermaid, Blackbeard puts a small boat out as bait for the mermaids. When they arrive there is a huge fight. Philip, the missionary who had been tied to the mast, manages to capture one and is smitten with her. Of course he has no choice and she is captured and placed into a water filled glass box. As the pirates walk through the jungle the mermaid starts having trouble breathing.

Philip saves her by prying open the container letting in fresh air. He then jams his bible into the box to allow air to enter the box. Shortly it becomes a moot point when the pirates drop the glass box and break it. The mermaid is spilled out and as she dries off her tail vanishes and a pair of legs, (Rather nice legs at that), appear. Since she has never had legs before she finds it impossible to walk. Philip starts carrying her and the pirates move off. It’s at this point that he names the Mermaid Serena.

At this point we’re getting into the weakness of the movie. We have Jack running around an island looking for the silver chalices. We also have Barbossa, who has forced Joshamee Gibbs to join him. Gibbs had stolen Jack’s map with the location of the Fountain of Youth, memorized it and burned it reasoning, (correctly) that Barbossa would kill him once he had the map.

Jack Sparrow finds Ponce De Leon’s ship balanced on a precipice. (How the hell it got there isn’t explained) He gets into the ship and find the remains of Ponce De Leon in a bed. He Also find Barbossa. They have their little fight and the ship starts rocking back and forth on it’s balance point. They quickly come to a truce and start looking for the chalices. They find the case containing them only to discover the Spanish had beaten them to the punch and left a pair of rocks behind instead. It’s here that Barbossa admits to Jack that his only motive is revenge against Blackbeard for having captured the Black Pearl, forcing Barbossa to amputate his own leg to escape.

Jack and Barbossa decide to raid the Spanish camp in order to steal the chalices. Since Barbossa can’t move very well, Jack sneaks into the Spanish camp and steals the chalices. As they try to sneak away, the Spanish catch them.

Barbossa and Jack start talking while tied to trees. Barbossa’s hands are somewhat free and he starts unscrewing his peg leg. Jack thinks he has a knife in it but it turns out to be something better, RUM! Jack instantly decides he wants one of those.

Of course, they escape and everyone eventually meets up with Blackbeard. Blackbeard and his crew have reached an area with small pools and the skeletons of mermaids tied to trees. Blackbeard has Serena tied to a tree and partially submerged. The idea is that there won’t be enough water for her to protect herself from the sun, and she can’t change into full human. She will then be in excruciating pain when the sun comes up and will generate the tear that is needed for the Fountain of Youth to work.

Philip tries to prevent this but is slashed by order of Blackbeard and left for dead. As the sun rises Serena is in pain but will not cry. Philip, who was only drugged wakes up and makes his way back to Serena. She sees him and generates a tear of joy. Blackbeard grabs her and forces the tear into a bottle. Serena thinks that Philip betrayed her. Blackbeard leaves her to die and heads off into the jungle.

Proceeding along, Jack Sparrow leads them to a cave, but really has no idea where to go from there. Here he takes the the two chalices and bangs them together to see if anything happens. Of course nothing does and just as Blackbeard is about to kill him, jack notices and reads the inscription on the chalices. Water magically appears and pools on the ceiling. Jack gets a boots and fall into the pool. He has arrived at the temple with the Fountain of Youth.

Philip tries to attack Blackbeard and is sliced open with a mortal wound. He heads back towards Serena with the intent of freeing her. When he reaches her he cuts her loose, but she is angry and still thinks he betrayed her and swims away.

Blackbeard, Barbossa, Angelica and the others arrive. Barbossa then goes after Blackbeard. He’s just about to lose the battle when the Spanish arrive. They promptly destroy the temple. Barbossa takes the opportunity to slash Blackbeard and then run him through. His sword has been poisoned so that he will have an advantage. Angelica rushes to Blackbeard and cuts herself on the sword.

Jack is horrified and as the Spanish leave, starts looking for the chalices the Spanish captain tossed into the water. Serena swims into the cavern and after finding the chalices that the Spaniards tossed into deep water, gives them to Sparrow, then retrieves the dying Phillip, taking him underwater to heal him.

Angelica intends to sacrifice herself for her father, but Sparrow fools them, and Angelica unknowingly drinks from the chalice containing Syrena’s tear, thus killing Blackbeard and saving her. Angelica is furious with Jack for doing this, but Jack explains that her father should have done this if he truly loved his daughter.

Although they declare their love, Jack, knowing she may avenge her father’s death, strands her on an island with a sword and a pistol with one shot, intending for a passing ship to pick her up. Angelica is furious with Jack and as jack rows away she fires at him and misses.

Jack then finds Gibbs, who used Sparrow’s compass to locate the Revenge and retrieve all the captured ships that Blackbeard had magically shrunk and bottled, including the Black Pearl. The two head off, hoping to find a way to return the Pearl to its original size.

Barbossa takes over the Queen Anne’s Revenge and using Blackbeard’s magic Sword, sets the rigging and causes the wind to blow.

Now stick around through credits because there’s an Easter Egg. Angelica, still on the island, finds Blackbeard’s voodoo doll of Sparrow, which has washed ashore.

So how do I rate this film? I give it three out of five stars. The effects were good, and Ian McShane plays Blackbeard perfectly. The writing seemed to be the weak point here. I think the script could have been tightened up a bit. Also Johnny Depp didn’t seem to be as active as Captain Jack Sparrow as in the previous films.

The love interest between Philip and Serena was obviously an attempt to bring back the one between Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightly. It failed completely. If they have a sequel, and I believe they have already scheduled it, I would be quite happy if they forgot about those two. In my opinion, that plot line ranks down there with Jar Jar Binks. (Ok, not quite THAT bad)

Now the final question. Was I entertained?

Yes I was and I do recommend seeing the film. As long as you understand it isn’t quite as over the top as the last one, you should enjoy it. Hopefully they will have the kinks worked out for the 5^th entry into this series and Johnny Depp can get back into the Captain Jack Sparrow mode he is so good at.

~The Angry Webmaster~

(2 votes, average: 1.00 out of 5)

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