Pirates of the Caribbean

I hesitate to call it bad. It's Pirates of the Caribbean after all. The most epic and beloved Pirate franchise in years, maybe ever.
But I wouldn't exactly call it good either.

They have lost Elisabeth and Will and the gays, and the movies are better for it. They all outstayed their welcome by at least one movie.
The new female lead, 'cos you know, pirate movies has to have cleavage, is played by Penélope Cruz, and they could have spared themselves that. She is not a good actress. And I wonder: She is supposed to play a Spanish lady, but how come, the angrier she gets, the clearer and better her English becomes?
The only characters that are left from the previous movies are the Captain himself, Barbossa and Gibbs. Which in my opinion was an excellent casting decision. In my opinion they were the only truly enjoyable characters from the previous movies. Except, of course, Tia Dalma, who was a positively fascinating character. (Who the screwed up royally. She was way more fun when she wasn't a crab goddess.)
The new characters, like Blackbeard, was kinda bland mostly. Except from Angelica, who I really didn't believe for a second, and was just bad. Philip was weird, Syrena was odd, the Spaniards didn't not become an exciting twist. They were just really... I don't know. Not interesting at all.
Scrum was really cool, and the kid was cool, but to have a movie rest on the secondary supporting cast is really disappointing.
The character development fell into: sloppy and lazy, non-existing, or WTF? I am seriously supposed to believe that?
Barbossa was awesome though, and I really believed his motivations when he told them to us, and all the out of character stuff he had been doing up until that point suddenly became in character after all.
The Captain thou, I didn't believe his motivations even a little, and his actions in the end made me believe them even less. Even if he had an extreme Jack Sparrow moment at the end of the climax, he disappointed me royally in the one.
Oh, and Keith Richards has a cameo. Which was fun.^^,

The camerawork was awful. Dreadful. No doubt the cover the fact that the stuntmen weren't any good at sword fighting.
Do not watch it in 3D. Small details were cool in 3D, like ashes and other things flying on the wind, but the way the camera seem to be thrown from one cameraman to the next during action scenes made my dizzy. In a lot of places the 3D adaptation split, especially on scenes where things were going on at the edges of the screen.

The plot was really bad. It was an excuse for milking more money out of the PotC cow.
To give an example. Blackbeard is recruiting sailors by having his daughter, a former corruptee of Jack, play drag in Jack Sparrows clothes, making everyone believe they are signing up to be on his ship.
Why?
The motivation for doing it this way is never explained.
Maybe it is because they needed Jack to get to their destination (the Fountain of Youth), 'cos they don't know the way. Ehm... Wot?
He is abducted several times to make him tell people where it is.
But, twist of twists: There is a ritual. Which Sparrow didn't even know about?!
And then, when the ritual involves murder, then he don't want to? Ehm...? Again: what? He is a bad man. I am pretty sure he has killed in the past. More than once.

The writing was poor. Nothing more to say.

Well, it was entertaining anyway. And I have long since stopped expecting any much in the way of quality from Disney live action. The first one, as is often the case with firsts, was amazing, and nothing since as even come close. But that is the way it is. You don't go to see Johnny Depp movies to see high drama or Oscar performances, you go to have fun. It's not that he can't, I need only mention Chocolate or Edward Scissorhands. The thing about Depp is that he thoroughly enjoys playing quirky and completely mad, and he is really really good at it, and that is one of the reasons we love him so much. He is downright fun. Pure unadulterated glee permeates every single performance, and that's what makes him wonderful.
So what if female counterparts are poor actresses, and not even that pretty? We aren't there to see them.
Or if the writing is shotty, and the plot has holes you can sail a cruise ship through? We are there to be entertained, and as long as you don't think to hard about stuff, that is easily achieved.
So yah, while I hesitate to call it bad, and it certainly wasn't good, it kept me from being bored for 2 hours and about 16 minutes, and that was the whole point of it, wasn't it?



One more annoying thing thou:
I realize Marvel want to connect their movies into a universe, but Captain America was made in 1941, 12 years before Iron Mans first appearance in 1963. Stark enterprises could not have made Captain America!!!!
Bah!