Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
Reviews by Paul Preston
Welcome to Today I Watched…, a series of posts documenting my new challenge – watch a movie a day for the rest of my life. Keep coming back to TheMovieGuys.net to find out what I watch each day…and get my take on it.
When I see a movie that’s a new release in theaters or on demand, I’ll give it a proper review in the “Reviews” or “Home Viewing”, otherwise, I’ll write about it here.
June 6, 2017 – Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
I would say “Oh, how the mighty have fallen”, but I haven’t been passionate about these movies since the first one. The third one, At World’s End, has some moments that are memorable, but time spent on the love affair between Will Turner and Elizabeth Swan gave way to constant arguing about who’s the captain and enjoying the antics of pirate Jack Sparrow got overwhelmed with special effects and my care waned. I thought the last one, On Stranger Tides, was the worst one yet, and still…for some reason…when I saw Jack Sparrow in a trailer for this summer’s pirate adventure, I got excited!
I shouldn’t have.
Dead Men Tell No Tales begins with another fun Jack Sparrow entrance (nothing will beat his entrance in the original movie), and there’s even an inventive action sequence involving pulling an entire bank off its foundation – a new an interesting way to do some pirate thieving. But quickly Johnny Depp’s bag of tricks leaves only mugging and from there the entire cast and crew build a noisy adventure that reeks of “obligatory”.
One of the biggest problems with the franchise today is that everything in the Caribbean at this point is supernatural. Even Geoffrey Rush returns as Barbosa, and hasn’t he died, like, five times in these movies? When there’s risk of it happening again, the film asks us to be worried or sad, but when characters (including Sparrow) have died as many times as they have in this franchise, where’s the danger?
With Will and Elizabeth out of the picture, more or less, the young, pretty people roles are relegated to Brenton Thwaites and Kaya Scodelario, who fill the above titles well, but fail to make a lasting impression. Javier Bardem joins the franchise as Salazar, a ghost captain on the hunt for Jack Sparrow, who, as a young pirate, did him in. He’s so violent, it’s not that fun. I can take anything, I’ve seen Cannibal Holocaust, but there was something off-putting in the huge body count Salazar racked up with constant stabbing and slicing up of sailors. None of Depp’s tomfoolery eased the dreary effect of that.
Visual effects are impressive, but never all that inspired. Again, it all feels Disney-mandated, but when that parent company is housing Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, an in-house animation front on a huge roll and a remake factory with hits like The Jungle Book and Cinderella, why keep this going?
Directed by: Joachim Rønning & Espen Sandberg
Release Date: May 26, 2017
Run Time: 129 Minutes
Rated: PG-13
Country: USA
Distributor: Walt Disney Pictures
