Director: Rob Marshall
Stars: Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Ian McShane, Penelope Cruz
Everyone seems to like the first film (if one is inclined to enjoy that type of story), but opinions on Pirates 2 and 3 vary from lukewarm to abysmal. Being a fan of the original trilogy in total, I do agree with arguments that the second and third films were a bit overambitious - but maybe its exactly that ambition that I like about them. They're two of the only big-budget, blockbuster films I can think of where the stories lost me at times - but due to their complexity, not their stupidity. They're bloated, yes, but also very smartly crafted.
Disney, haven taken criticisms of the trilogy to heart, have heard the cries of fans who like their bread white and their sex missionary. In other words, On Stranger Tides has been dumbed down a bit, for your viewing pleasure. Well. . . for the most part. Some side-plots are either left unexplained, or very cryptically so, such as the majority of the romance between Philip the Missionary and Syrena the Mermaid. Does this sink the movie? No.
What does sink the movie is the flat, uninspiring direction from Rob Marshall (Chicago) - the dude who somehow stole the Director's Guild Award away from Roman Polanski (for The Pianist) and Martin Scorsese (for Gangs Of New York). I was baffled when I first heard about Marshall being hired to take over the franchise, and I remain equally baffled having just come home from watching it. "Sure," I once thought to myself, "let's give him a chance. After all, I wasn't the biggest fan of Gore Verbinski before he directed the first film." I was wrong to have even the smallest degree of faith in his abilities. Lines that could have killed, and are delivered perfectly by Mr. Depp, lay flat and lifeless onscreen. What should be a rousing escape scene just looks like a YouTube video of some idiot swinging from a chandelier.
Verbinski picked some unique looking faces for his band of scallywags, like The Office star Mackenzie Crook, and filmed them in a grotesque, Gilliam-like wide-angle close-ups. Here, we have a stable of fairly boring looking, indistinguishable pirates shot in flat medium and wide shots. The usually brilliant Darius Wolski returns as Director Of Photography, yet is given nothing interesting to shoot or frame.
Most damning of all, the characters clearly aren't being played the way they should. According to the dialogue in the film, I'm to assume that Blackbeard is a terrifying motherfucker - "The pirate that all pirates fear", or some such thing - yet the usually great Ian McShane is just playing him as a huge asshole. Similarly, Penelope Cruz's character is supposedly feared by her crew, and is set up as being the female counterpart to Depp's Jack Sparrow, but the way she plays it leaves me unconvinced. Again - those are both fantastic actors, who generally know what they're doing. I'm leaving the blame for their performances solely on Marshall's doorstep.
This isn't a franchise killer, I don't think - the reviews so far have been pretty bad, but I could see less discerning moviegoers having a decent enough time with this. I didn't find it to be painful - just boring. I would go see a future installment, if they can get a better director back at the helm.
FREDERICK OPINES - BAD
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