Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (www.the-usher.com)

"You lied to me by telling me the truth? "

Returning to London to discover why a crew is been recruited in his name, Captain Jack Sparrow (Depp) is a wanted man but when the English authorities capture him, he is not sent to the gallows like every other pirate. Granted an audience with King George, Jack is asked about what he knows about the Fountain of Youth because the Spanish have sent a fleet to capture it. Managing to escape, Jack discovers that it is not only the English and the Spanish that are after the Fountain, his former love Angelica (Cruz) is leading a crew to find it and she and her father, the notorious pirate Blackbeard (McShane) will do anything to get there first.

There are only a few franchises that are a license to print money, however ever bad they are, but can the latest Pirates of the Caribbean adventure continue this trend?

When it comes to a franchise continually breaking the billion dollar worldwide takings total, the chief amongst them, the one that blunders the box office every time a new swashbuckling tale sails onto the silver screen, Pirates of the Caribbean sets a very high bar. While ‘The Curse of the Black Pearl’ delighted crowds and re-invigorated the Pirate genre for a whole new generation, its sequels ‘Dead Man’s Chest’ and ‘At World’s End’ were mauled by the critics but still went on to set summer box office records. Now after four summers away Captain Jack Sparrow returns but with a new captain at the helm in Oscar winning musical director Rob Marshall but can he achieve something that Gore Verbinski could not do? Make a good Pirates sequel.

With Davy Jones washed away, Keira and Orlando getting on with their lives and few more of the Verbinski crowd sent into Pirate retirement, Rob Marshall takes the franchise into new, uncharted waters. Here we see Captain Jack Sparrow heading to London to free his first mate Gibbs from the hands of King George II and his newly appointed Pirate privateer Captain Barbossa but while there he discovers that someone is posing as him and recruiting a crew. The imposter is someone from his past however, a love that got away and a someone who still has not got over him, the beautiful Angelica. Little does he know that Angelica is recruiting a crew for the Queen Anne’s Revenge, the ship of the most feared pirate on the seven seas, Blackbeard and he is looking for the same price as Jack, the fabled Fountain of Youth. While this story was hinted at during the finale of the third film, series writers Terry Rossio and Ted Elliot have draw inspiration from the novel ‘On Stranger Tides’ by Tim Powers. Unfortunately this does not make for a return to form.

We all know that the reason for the success of the series is the performance of Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow but after making such a splash with the first film, producer Jerry Bruckheimer and his creative team have now failed deliver a decent script to him for the third time. Even by bringing back the always wonderful Geoffrey Rush as Barbossa and Kevin McNally as Gibbs, throwing in the beautiful Penelope Cruz as Angelica, Sam Claflin as missionary Phillip Swift, Astrid Berges-Frisbey as mermaid Syrena and former TV antique dealer turned film star Ian McShane as the feared pirate Blackbeard, you simply cannot get over the fact that ‘On Stranger Tides’ is just… boring. Nothing much happens in a film that is almost two and a half hours long and what does is not engaging enough to hold your attention. With the lack of any real spectacle, with the exception of the well choreographed Mermaid attack, a villain that only possesses a ‘magic sword’ that controls rigging and a religious undertone that takes away some of the wonder of even the previous films, the fourth Pirates film might well be the second best in the series but in saying that, it did not have much to beat.

With added unnecessary and underutilised 3D, ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides’ is not the return to form that fans of the original may have been hoping for. It may be the second best in the franchise but this does not excuse the fact that Rob Marshall was the wrong choice as director because he has no experience with films like this and that fresh writing blood should have been brought in to liven up the series. A missed opportunity and another example of lazy blockbuster filmmaking, lets hope Jerry Bruckheimer and Johnny Depp get it right for the inevitable fifth adventure as this franchise is still a box office treasure chest for them to blunder.

'Double Play Edition' includes the movie on 2 formats: Blu-ray & DVD

Disc 1 - Blu-ray Feature Film + Bonus
Bloopers of the Caribbean
Lego Pirates of the Caribbean Shorts
Audio commentary by Director Rob Marshall and Executive Producer John DeLuca
Discover Blu-ray 3D With Timon & Pumbaa

Disc 2 - DVD Feature Film + Bonus
Bloopers of the Caribbean
Lego Pirates of the Caribbean Shorts
Discover Blu-ray 3D With Timon & Pumbaa

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2011