Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

Directed by Rob Marshall

(PG-13)

**

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Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow “is essentially the Fonzie of the Pirates of the Caribbean films,” said Tasha Robinson in the A.V. Club. A lovable rascal of a side character at first, he’s now being asked to do without romantic leads Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom and somehow carry the entire fourth installment virtually solo. Joining forces with Ian McShane’s Blackbeard in a race against Spanish conquistadores and the British Royal Navy to find the Fountain of Youth, Depp “swishes, swans, and swashbuckles” through most every scene, so you’d better appreciate such antics. Depp does a “plucky job,” aided a bit by old pros Geoffrey Rush and Penélope Cruz, said Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times. But no sooner does the movie put to sea than it begins a “long, expensive, and bombastic” voyage to mediocrity. Mermaids are a fresh touch, but what’s missing from Pirates IV is the “cartoonish exuberance” that made its predecessors “intermittently delightful,” said A.O. Scott in The New York Times. Instead, this is “by far the least strange of all the Pirates episodes.” The least fun, too.