It’s a miraculous experience to find a good sequel. A movie that accurately honors and keeps up the tradition of excellence set by its predecessor. Around one out of every 100 sequels is a good sequel. Unfortunately, “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides”, starring Johnny Depp (Alice in Wonderland), Penelope Cruz (Vanilla Sky), and Geoffrey Rush (King’s Speech) is one of those other 99.
It is pretty much the same basic idea as the other three installments of the “Pirates” franchise. The only thing that sets “On Stranger Tides” apart from the other three movies is the absolutely useless implementation of filming in 3-D.The over arching plot of this movie is the quest to find the Fountain of Youth.
King George inexplicably finds out that Sparrow is on a mission to find it, so he sends Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) to get there first. Time for pathetic plot twist number one. There is a Jack Sparrow imposter somewhere in town. To make a long boring story short, the impostor is a woman named Angelica. Angelica reveals her motives for wanting to find the fountain in a rash illogical conversation that no two sane people would have with each other.
Angelica wishes to use the fountain’s water to offer her father, the infamous Blackbeard (Ian McShane), a few more years of life. From this point, the movie becomes a race to find the fountain. It is eventually revealed that one must obtain the tears of a mermaid to drink out of the cups of Ponce de Léon, the famous French explorer who was the first to find the fountain. Once those conditions are met, one can drink from the cup and will then be given more life.
See how easy that was to explain? That took maybe two minutes. “On Stranger Tides” manages to stretch that out for about 15 minutes. And so the crew ventures off to capture a mermaid in these dark waters and caves. They capture one after losing multiple crew members. And, plot twist number two, the mermaid develops a relationship with one of the remaining crew members. Well, Blackbeard discovers this, and tortures the crew member, Phillip, to make the mermaid, Syrena, cry.
In a climactic battle scene, Phillip is fatally wounded, and Syrena tells him that she can save him and he can live forever, as the mermaids do. How to live forever, one may ask? Well, Phillip has to kiss her under water. That isn’t a joke. That’s actually what the movie says gives you eternal life. It appears that Disney has merged “The Little Mermaid” and “Sleeping Beauty”. Wonderful. Mermaid tears, check. Magical map and compass to help find the fountain, check. Corny pirates, check. Time to find the fountain. To make a drawn out story short, like it should have been, Jack tricks Penelope and Blackbeard to drink from the wrong cups, therefore killing Blackbeard and sparing Angelica. After professing his love to her, he then strands her on an island. Because that makes sense, right?
Penelope Cruz, mermaids, and crazy sword fights. Just from that, one would think that this movie would be awesome. But, the director, Rob Marshall, (Nine), is so bad at what he does that he managed to make that combination monotonous and lackluster. On the opening night of the movie, at the first showing, there were literally three different people asleep at different times and one man with an iPod in hand, playing Angry Birds from start to finish. That is a pretty strong message that this movie is really bor-zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
One last thing that really bothers me is the lack of consistency in Penelope Cruz’s character, Angelica. It seems like a group of three giraffes sat around a camp fire writing this, having no idea what real human emotion looks like .The writer for Cruz’s character was either not taking his medicine, had Dissociative Identity Disorder (multiple personalities), or there was more than one writer and they had absolutely no communication with each other.
After seeing the ending, it is clear there will be another sequel. Buckle up. “Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” receives one star out of four. This movie is rated PG-13, with a running time of two hours and 17 minutes.
