Caribbean

Movie Review: Pirates Of The Caribbean – On Stranger Tides

Jon The Blogcentric2 Comments

DISCLAIMER: Hi. This is my second-last summer movie review where I’m playing catch-up on my reviews. When I give my review of Harry Potter, I will finally be all caught up. In the meantime enjoy yet another late summer movie review.

Jack Sparrow.   

There should be a “Captain” in there somewhere.

As I said before, the summer movie season is usually about the tried-and-true making big box office results. It’s at the box office where we learn if it’s tried-and-true or tried-and-tired. Up for this summer is the fourth installment of the Pirates of The Caribbean series: On Stranger Tides. Returning is Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow, his most popular role of all-time. The big questions are does Jack still have the winning charm at the box office? Also does the latest Pirates adventure still have what it takes to thrill and charm and keep the Pirates phenomenon active?

This time Jack’s quest is the Fountain Of Youth. King George wants Jack to guide it to beat the Spanish. The one surprise is that his nemesis from the first movie, Hector Barbossa, is now a privateer in the British navy and now heading it. Already the intrigue would start for the die-hard POTC fans. Another interesting thing that he would be foiled by an imposter of himself: former lover Angelica who is Blackbeard’s daughter.

The part of the mission involving capturing a mermaid’s tear and a captive falling in love with a mermaid is probably the only thing in the movie that’s even close to fresh. The tear being collected by Blackbeard starts the rivalry scenario all over again. The main rivalry in the movie is different, if not unique. This time Jack Sparrow and Barbossa join forces to defeat Blackbeard. Barbossa has a grudge match of his own against Blackbeard for his amputated leg. Meanwhile the Spanish battle the Pirates for the sake of killing the fountain because they believe it’s cursed. Often rivalry upon rivalry upon rivalry gets too confusing unless it makes sense. Not here..

One glimpse at the storyline is that you could easily see it was hatched together in an instant. We see the typical formulas of the Pirates movies: Jack being his flamboyant cocky self, rival pirates, lands to conquer, new nemeses and new loves. This has been common ever since the first Pirates movie burst on. Its winning formula is now starting to become stale and predictable. Even the character of Jack Sparrow has lost his charm over the years. When he first arrived, he was arrogant, eccentric but charismatic and was able to charm the audience. If it weren’t for Jack’s personality, the first Pirates of The Caribbean movie could have been seen as a joke. Now Jack looks like a rehash that’s getting tired out and only tries to be entertaining. Penelope Cruz plays the typical lover of Jack. Villains are practically predictable. Often when an action scene or a battle comes on, I often question “Who didn’t expect that?” The only things close to being fresh was the mermaids and the surprise of Barbossa being an ally of Jack instead of a rival. Outside of that, it remains formulaic.

As for the business, it’s already showing signs of waning. The first movie, Dead Man’s Chest is the biggest grosser with almost $425 million. The follow-up, The Curse Of The Black Pearl had a record-setting opening weekend but its overall gross failed to top Chest. On Stranger Tides is the lowest-grossing of the Pirates movies with only $240 million. The future of the Pirates franchise should make a lot of Disney execs think whether the fifth movie is worth it or not.

Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is a movie that will only excite Pirates fans at the most. It offers little freshness or anything unpredictable. So unless you’re a fan of Jack Sparrow, I believe it’s not worth it.

Oh yeah, just to let you know you’ll only have one more summer movie review after this. Then I’m finally caught up.

2011 Movie Year Picking Up Slowly But Surely

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I’m sure a lot of you remember back in March of this year, I posted a story about how dismal the first two months of the box office were looking. Yeah, they kind of had me nervous of what was yet to come for the whole year.

The month of March didn’t look too optimistic either. Mind you it is hard to challenge the previous year’s March when it had Alice In Wonderland opening, and that had the sixth-biggest opening weekend gross ever at the time. Basically March 2011 was another yawner of a month with it failing to outgross March 2010. The box office for the first three months was so bland, I’m glad Box Office Mojo didn’t write up a summary of March. Otherwise I would have had an article titled Diary Of A Wimpy Box Office.

With that dismality, I was expecting April to be yet another ho-hum movie month in 2011. Actually things looked up. According to Box Office Mojo, this April was the highest-grossing April ever at $791 million, outgrossing last year’s April by 5%. This was also the first year since 1984 in which April’s box office tally was bigger than any of its preceding months. A lot of it can be attributed to strong showings from Hop, Insidious, Source Code and Rio. However it was a case of save the best for last when Fast Five opened with $86.2 million, the highest-ever April opening weekend. This April also sold the third-most movie tickets of any April.  And to think that most of the April movies weren’t in 3D.

The month of April did a lot to lift some spirits who were paying close attention to the box office. Despite April’s strong showing, the year-to-date is still struggling.The box office total from January to April is nearly $2.9 billion, the lowest since 2008. Total ticket sales up to April were also the lowest since 1995.

As for May, the biggest opener came from Thor and it continues to hold the #1 spot this weekend. The May tally so far is just 5% less than that of May 2010 to date. Nevertheless there’s a lot to anticipate, like Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tide this weekend. The following weekend, The Hangover Part 2 and Kung Fu Panda 2 will open, so there’s still lots to wait for.

Interesting about the box office. Sometimes the most intense competition isn’t necessarily movie vs. movie or star vs. star or even studio vs. studio. Sometimes it’s movie weekend vs. last year’s movie weekend or movie month vs. last year’s movie month. Or even movie year vs. previous movie year. The competition doesn’t end, does it?

WORKS CITED:

BOX OFFICE MOJO: April Sees Box Office Rebound. BoxOfficeMojo.com Author: Brandon Gray. May 4, 2011. Imdb.com. <http://www.boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=3154&p=.htm>