So Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales is about as good as most the rest of the series. If that makes you say, “Cool! I should go see it” then ok. Someone has to like these movies. If you say, “Oh. Well, that’s too bad. Guess I’ll skip this one,” then you and I agree. I sat through this 2 hour flick just wishing it would end. One of those movies where, in the final action piece, someone falls while climbing and I groan. Not for the character, but because that means the movie will go on just a few minutes longer.
Basic premise is that various peoples are chasing a pirate MacGuffin (the Trident of Poseidon), more ghost pirates are chasing Jack Sparrow, other people are chasing Sparrow in order to not be killed by the same ghost pirates, etc. There’s a lot of people with their own motivations running through a plot that barely matters.
The main stars, besides Jack Sparrow, are a young couple who are basically repeats of Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightly. In fact, minor spoiler, the boy is their son, seeking the trident to lift the curse on Bloom’s character. This results in the only good moment of the movie and it’s only good because this series has been around long enough to somehow earn a slightly emotional moment based on some end-of-movie cameos.
It’s not like the money isn’t on screen or the action is particularly poorly done. It’s just a bunch of noise and commotion but none of it means anything and is just tedious. Action flicks have to have stakes… they have to matter and be filmed with more care than just “Good enough”. Bah… action is as subjective as comedy… but none of this worked for me.
So, yeah, there’s nothing really worth seeing in this movie. It’s just a lot of barely-there plot, a number of pointless scenes that should have been cut for run-time, and action that just happens. Good production values… and most of this can be said for the last three movies.
Score: 57