The Internet Movie Database
CinemaSins Movie Reviews
From the book On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers
Oh, you know, pretty much everyone from the other three movies is off to find the Fountain of Youth. Hijinks ensue.
So there I was at WonderCon, which is Comic-con’s (smaller) sister convention, and is usually held in San Francisco. In 2010, Maid-of-Awesome and I spent the Saturday there and had a great time.
Because one of our favorite writers, Tim Powers, was speaking. And we were right there in the front row. And he was GREAT. He was telling stories about this movie, or rather, about how since they optioned his book he had heard NOTHING from them. And he was to get paid an undisclosed sum of money upon start of filming. He said (and I paraphrase shamelessly) “They are just not talking to me. So I get on the blogs, and they say, filming is about to start! and I think, yippee! and then the next day the blogs say, Johnny Depp wsa killed in a motorcycle crash, and I think, Oh no! and the next day, the blogs say, No, he wasn’t killed, he’s just fine, and I think, Whew! But I don’t hear anything from Disney…”
Well, of course, they DID start filming. And the subtitle of the 4th Pirates of the Caribbean movie is indeed On Stranger Tides, which is the name of Tim Powers’ book that they supposedly took the plot from, and which is a book that if you haven’t read it, you should. Not to mention all of his other books, especially Last Call.
But I digress.
So, being a fan of the first and third Pirates of the Caribbean movies (and we won’t even mention the second, which sucked), I was so ready to go see this.
The movie actually opened on a Friday that was my day off, so I said to Mr. Otter, First show. 11 am. I’m going. You with me? and of course he was.
And, silly us, we actually expected that there might be a line. Hahahahaha! silly us. We got there a little after 10 am, and the box office wasn’t even open, and there was nobody there to see it for about 10 minutes. By the time the box office opened, I think there were six of us in line.
And I’ve been going on and on about the antecedents to this movie…because truthfully? it wasn’t so much of a much.
I mean, don’t get me wrong- it wasn’t as bad as the second movie, which has about an hour of actual plot development and an hour and a half of people running around chasing each other. And I didn’t expect it to be as good as the first or my fav, the third.
But I did expect some wit. Some humor. Some…dare I say it? CHARM.
But no. The whole cast, including Depp and Rush, was just phoning it in. It was perfectly okay, not horrible, but not at all interesting, and with plot holes you could drive a mack truck through (as opposed to the first three, which actually made sense and held together pretty well, with just about all of the plot threads paying off by the end of the third.)
It’s out of the theaters (my bad, I’m doing four months of reviews at once) so you won’t be tempted to spend a lot of money to go see it. If you can, check it out for free from your library, that’s about what it’s worth.
It takes up pretty much where #3 left off- Cap’t Jack (and everyone else, including the Spanish and Blackbeard) is on his way to Florida to find the Fountain of Youth, which has complicated rules and prophecies. They eventually do, most of the people there are killed, and Captain Jack comes off fine.
Even more unbelieveable than the rest is that he would have more of a pash for Penelope Cruz than any other woman he’s around. The scene with the mermaids was great, but fifteen minutes does not rescue a 2 1/2 hour movie.
Skip it and watch the good ones over again. That’s what I’m going to do.
theotterlimits 