Next trip to the moving picture house was to see the latest in the Pirates of the Caribbean Movie, On Stranger Tides. The movie is a bit of a step back for the franchise returning to the more compact stand alone format rather than the connected stories of Dead Man’s Chest and At Worlds End. The original trilogy has always put me in mind of the Matrix trilogy (A good first film followed by two linked pieces of pap) so I was glad that they decided to go back to a simpler plot line. The plot is based on the book by Tim Powers simply updated to fit into the Pirates of the Caribbean universe to enable Jack Sparrow to be the hero. The Director is now Rob Marshall who has a background in dance and musical numbers (including winning an Oscar for Chicago) and this is quite evident in some of the fight scenes. So Keira Knightly and Orlando Bloom are out and Penelope Cruz is in as Depp’s love interest. Ian “Lovejoy” McShane comes in as the infamous pirate Blackbeard, for those of us who grew up with 90’s BBC programming it is very difficult to think of him as anything else than the antiques dealer but for American audiences he is probably better known for his role in Deadwood which paints an altogether less PG interpretation.
The film itself has Jack Sparrow searching for the fountain of youth and being pressed into service of the supernatural Blackbeard, at the same time Geoffory Rush returns as Captain Barbosa (Hasn’t he been killed several times now?) who has crossed the legality divide to claim the fountain for the British Government whilst trying to stay ahead of the Spanish party. (Basically the story is three groups trying to get to the fountain.) Along the way there are mermaids to capture, treasures to uncover and all of the usual pirates fare. Overall the cast give a good performance and with the exception of one particularly frivolous sword fight (It is a Pirates movie after all) the plot clips along with a decent tempo. Depp is always very committed to the role he clearly enjoys and McShane and Cruz work very well alongside him to make this movie, whilst not a classic, a couple of hours of harmless fun and a welcome change from the last two films in the franchise.
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