Cinema Review: Pirates of the Caribbean - On Stranger Tides (2011)

Can a franchise survive a widely reviled instalment? Jerry Bruckheimer and no doubt many executives at Disney are crossing their fingers right now hoping that the answer is yes. Even behind the scenes it has been admitted that At World’s End, the second Pirates sequel, which was shot back to back with its immediate predecessor, was not up to standard. (Bruckheimer, for example, acknowledged that it was too long, although that was really one of its minor sins.) They’ve gone back to the drawing board this time, actually starting with a complete script in place – now there’s a change – and hiring a new director, Rob Marshall of Chicago fame (and in need of a hit after the misfiring Nine). Thankfully jettisoned too is a lot of the weirdness and impenetrability of the previous outing, the writers – returning duo Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio – opting for more of a straightforward adventure. As teased at the end of World’s End, it revolves around the quest for the Fountain of Youth.

As a plot device, it’s a pretty good one – even if the similarities with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade’s Holy Grail MacGuffin are evident – and gives the film a good deal more purpose, and significantly less bizarre surrealism, than last time. It belongs more in the territory of the first film: supernatural, yes – this time there are zombie pirates and vicious mermaids – but more of a twist on myth and legend than a major detour into full-on fantasy. Some variety is offered with a bit of geographical scope – a quick prologue finds us in a Spanish palace, before spending the first act with Captain Jack in a well-realised London. There’s no hiding that it lacks the zip and sparkle of the first or even second films in the series, but it’s diverting enough.

Marshall does not seem to boast the comic timing of predecessor Gore Verbinski – jokes tend to fall flat, and twice a person’s face is hidden from view but their identity is blatant even before their reveal. Likewise the action scenes lack a certain flair; they’re efficient and energetic, but feel just like the work of the second unit. An exception is a mid-film sequence involving the aforementioned mermaids, which is this film’s only particularly original addition, innovatively staged and quite suspenseful. It’s much needed to enliven a leaden midsection. Despite the film’s quest for simplicity, the writers still have not been able to eliminate the bloat that has afflicted, in varying degrees, every instalment so far (even the first).

It’s a relief when proceedings finally reach somewhere that could be described as tropical. There’s little ‘of the Caribbean’ about the film, probably because it’s the first film to not actually film there - Hawaii stood in for the island parts. The colour and vibrancy of true West Indian scenery is missed, but even Hawaii is not given much screen time. An infuriating majority of the film takes place at night – perhaps a budgetary issue – which lends itself neither to impressive vistas nor comfortable 3D watching, with the darkening effect of the glasses really straining the eyes after a while. For that matter, the third dimension is barely ever used – this is surely one of the most flat looking ‘3D’ films yet, making practically no use of the technology.

A fixture of these films has always been Hans Zimmer’s jaunty scoring*, the work of the ubiquitous composer representing one of the few high points of the last film. Here, disappointingly, he’s in sleepwalking mode, the soundtrack just sounding like a rehash of previous themes. There’s none of the boundary-pushing experimentation he’s exhibited of late in films such as Inception, Sherlock Holmes or The Dark Knight, and even At World’s End boasted much more variety. It seems he’s lost the creative spark where all things piratical are concerned.

The same could be said, it seems, of Johnny Depp. He's game as ever in the role that propelled him to superstardom, but he does not light up the screen the way he once did. Perhaps it's overexposure, or possibly even the absence of a plank of wood in the form of Orlando Bloom opposite him to play against. (The Orlando/Keira replacements here get scant screen time.) New addition Penelope Cruz threatens to be fiery but her backstory with Jack is not made enough use of, while Ian McShane as Blackbeard, this film's big bad, is oddly restrained and leaves little impression. Thank goodness, then, for Geoffrey Rush, who seems to be having as much fun as ever, his character Barbossa now serving the British crown as a peg-legged privateer. When Rush and Depp share the screen, a sprinkling of the old magic returns.

On Stranger Tides could be accused of playing it safe, and while it's true tha does seem content to retread old ground, it at least isn't as offensively bad as the last time Captain Jack and company reached our screens. It's also welcome that this is, for the most part, a standalone escapade with no larger pretensions to being part of an epic saga. For a franchise built on the lighthearted swashbuckling template, that's certainly the right road to take.

*Zimmer disciple (and Media Ventures cohort) Klaus Badelt was the credited composer for the first film, but really that score was a committee effort with Zimmer's fingerprints all over it, including substantial lifts from Gladiator.



Summary
While On Stranger Tides may not be a runaway success, it does manage to navigate the once-beloved series to calmer waters. Functional, reasonably entertaining, but lacking in inspiration.