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Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar's Revenge

Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge

I feel disappointed. The first pirates movie was such a huge hit. So much fun, great music, great performances, and I loved it. I enjoyed the second pirates movie just a little bit more than the first too. But then I couldn’t even begin to tell you what happened in the others, they were just that awful. I’m surprised they even thought about making another movie after those, but I guess they figured that there were still plenty of gold doubloons left to be wrung from the pockets of the cinema going public. When the early feedback started coming back that this new movie was as good as the first, I was excited. When the bad reviews started coming in earlier this week though, I wasn’t so excited. And then when I watched the Baywatch movie a few days ago, which got a much worse panning from the critics than Pirates was getting, and I actually ended up enjoying it, I was hopeful for Pirates.

The movie opens with young Henry Turner, hell bent on freeing his father Will (Orlando Bloom) from the Flying Dutchmans curse. He believes that if he can find Poseidon’s Trident he’ll be able to do that and when he meets up with Carina Smyth, who thinks she can work out the location of the trident, they set off on an adventure. Oh and they decide to join forces with Jack Sparrow, who’s also being hunted by an evil Spanish ghost called Salazar. And Captain Barbossa is in it too… for some reason. There’s a lot going on in this movie, you need to keep up with who’s on what side.

All the same ingredients from the first movie are here, but aside from a couple of inventively funny scenes – a bank being towed through the town by horses, Jack being spun around in a guillotine and narrowly avoiding losing his head on each turn – the rest is a bit of a blur. Mostly because the rest of it is an overloaded CGI assault on the senses. Most of the original movies spark, originality and humour has gone, not helped by Johnny Depp, who just seems like he can’t be bothered anymore. It’s saying something when Paul McCartney (playing his Uncle Jack) ends up doing a better job of playing a version of Jack Sparrow than Depp is!

Newcomers Brenton Thwaites and Kaya Scodelario do a good job as the new Keira and Orlando (who both make brief appearances too), but this is one franchise that should definitely be laid to rest now.

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