Pirates of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides Review [Rating:6/10]
Movie Review by Variety
When financial necessity transformed Disney’s breezy “Pirates of the Caribbean” into a ponderous, waterlogged trilogy, the franchise reached such a saturation point that even star Johnny Depp admitted he often had no clue what was going on in his own scenes. For that, “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” serves as a welcome corrective, reviving the fun, feather-light frivolity that any film based on a Disneyland ride ought to exhibit. It has nary an original idea and still doesn’t make much sense, but it’s lost all pretensions that it should, and looks poised to plunder massive worldwide coin.
Making a conscious break from Gore Verbinski’s trilogy — and dropping two key protagonists without explanation — new director Rob Marshall discards much of the convoluted mythology of the later pics, and instead adapts an unrelated novel (Tim Powers’ “On Stranger Tides”) to fit the characters.
That’s hardly the only looting going on, however. This film contains heavy lifting from “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” a moony supernatural romance cribbed straight from Stephenie Meyer, and even a Lone Ranger and Tonto-style walk into the sunset. Some of this falls flat, but Marshall gets away with it on the sheer earnestness of his appropriations — had he attempted to disguise them, it would have felt dishonest; had he winked at them, the film would have disintegrated into a smirking exercise. As it is, it almost brings to mind Umberto Eco’s famous description of “Casablanca” as a hundred different cliches celebrating a reunion.
Movie Review by The Hollywood Reporter
Johnny Depp searches for the fountain of youth and Keith Richards delivers a soon-to-be-classic line in director Rob Marshall’s lively 3D “Pirates.”
LONDON – Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow is back in excellent form for his fourth adventure in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, which is more serious in the hands of a new director, Rob Marshall, and thanks to Penelope Cruz it’s also a good deal sexier.
Best known for musicals such as Nine and the Academy Award-winning Chicago, Marshall shows terrific flair with all the usual chases and sword fights, and he handles the 3D well. He also adds a dash of pepper with lively sexual tension between Sparrow and a Spanish firecracker named Angelica (Cruz).
Angelica is Jack’s match for swordplay and sexy banter, and while the tone of the film, which deals with a search for the fountain of youth, is darker than the three directed by Gore Verbinski, its action, adventure and comedy will see it find a similar pot of theatrical gold.
Movie Review by Emanuel Levy
Against all odds, four may be the lucky number for Disney and its mega-hit franchise “Pirates of the Caribbean,” a series that began high a decade ago and reached a nadir in 2007 with “At World’s End,” the muddled and tiresome third installment.
Johnny Depp, reprising his iconic, Oscar-nominated part of Captain Jack Sparrow, is easily the best element of the new chapter, as he was of the previous ones. Appearing in almost each and every scene, Depp gives a dominant performance that holds together the rather loosely structured film, which changes scenery, plot, and tone from one sequence to another.
Narratively, “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides,” leaves much to be desired, but, overall, it succeeds in capturing some of fun, humor, and adventure that defined the first film, “The Curse of the Black Pearl,” when it came out of nowhere (so to speak) and in the process revivified a genre that was all but dead. In an effort to revamp and reenergize the blockbuster, Disney has hired a new director, Rob Marshall, gotten rid of two major characters (played by Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley), and cast the feisty Penelope Cruz, international cinema’s most recent sex symbol, in a major part.
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