movie review: pirates 4

Pirates of the Caribbean 4: On stranger tides

It really depends on who you talk to as to whether they think the movie is good or not. Personally I liked the movie, but I also didn't go in with a lot of high expectations. I wasn't a huge fan of pirates 2 or 3, so I didn't expect this one to be spectacular either. Let me be the first to say that I'm so glad Will and Elizabeth weren't in this one. So let me give a basic good, bad, and ugly overview.

The bad:

There wasn't really any character development even with the new characters like Angelica or Blackbeard. That was my biggest complaint with the whole thing, they didn't bother to delve past the surface of most of the characters. But, it didn't really bother me too much because when you go to a Pirates movie you're not going to see amazing character development and complicated relationships, you're going to see Johnny Depp and sword fights (lets be honest, you know that's true). My only other fairly big complaint was the attempted love story between a supporting character and a mermaid. It was kind of weird and awkward and seemed like the director didn't really have an end goal, or a start goal for that matter with the two. If they had been taken out of the movie, nothing would lack.

Aside from that there's only a few other things. One of which was that there were no stand out scenes which made you go "wow that was an awesome and/or really funny scene" which made me kind of sad. Everything was on the same "meh" scale. And even though there were a few sword fights they can never match the one between Norrington/Will/Jack in the second movie.

The good:

Even though there was very little character development I was happy they added new characters, especially Angelica. I've gotta say she's pretty b.a. and basically a female version of Jack. The chemistry between Johnny and Penelope was great. If RUF has another halloween costume party this year, I might grab a cool hat, pirate jacket, boots and go as her cause she's pretty cool. My favorite part of the movie was that it definitely wasn't short of funny one liners. Nothing was overtly "hey we want the audience to laugh at this really funny thing" which made it really nice. I'm always a fan of one liners and subtle humor, but apparently nobody else in the theatre was because I was frequently the only one laughing. I also really appreciated the fact that the plot wasn't insanely overly complicated like the 3rd one. I don't know about you, but I still can't get who betrayed who and for what reason.

Even though the sword fights weren't the most amazing thing I've ever seen, they're still sword fights so therefore they're pretty cool. As with the other movies in the franchise there was plenty of sci-fi stuff like mermaids and a ship that came alive when blackbeard told it to. I also think they kept a good balance of characters from the first 3 and new ones. They kept people like Gibbs, the first lieutenant from the 1st movie ("that's gotta be the best pirate I've ever seen" guy who everybody likes), Barbosa, and even the monkey to keep a sense of familiarity with the audience.

Over all it was pretty good and I'd see it again if somebody asked. But I'd probably see it before 3 when the tickets are only $5.