Pirates of the Caribbean 5: Dead Men Tell No Tales has ran into stormy waters with the critics. While some are impressed, others say it's time for the franchise to walk the plank.
The film, which is also known as Salazar's Revenge, brings together Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow, along with regulars Orlando Bloom and Geoffrey Rush, with Javier Bardem, Brenton Thwaites and Kaya Scodelario.
Home and Away star Thwaites plays Bloom's son, who joins forces with a mysterious orphan (Scodelario) and Jack Sparrow to find the Trident of Poseidon and defeat a band of evil ghost pirates.
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The use of the young characters - Twaites is 27 years old; Scodelario is 25 - prompted the Hollywood Reporter's John DeFore to dub the new film "Pirates: The Next Generation".
But unlike the Star Trek franchise-extender, he says, Pirates isn't bold enough to dispense with its aging protagonist, the "cartoonishly louche Keith Richards-meets-Hunter Thompson pirate Jack Sparrow", who seems more like "a theme-park mascot than a Hollywood swashbuckler".
Sparrow remains the focus of the film, although his "loopy novelty has faded" and Depp gives a "phoned in performance".
Mike McCahill in The Guardian says Pirates has "always been about delivering pantomimic nonsense", so Depp duly does what Depp does in the films.
Younger actors see the series enter it "Muppet Babies or Scrappy-Doo phase", he adds, but the "fresher blood" behind the camera is "not unwelcome" and while Dead Men Tell No Tales moves at a faster pace than any Pirates film, "nothing has really been added".
However, Ian Sandwell on Digital Spy, says the film is "one of the surprises of the summer blockbuster season so far".
It is unburdened by the convoluted plots that weighed down the previous sequels, he says, and the "streamlined approach", with its "good old-fashioned quest for buried treasure", results in "the best Pirates of the Caribbean sequel yet".
The "biggest and best thing the film remembers to do is have fun, which it achieves with aplomb", Caroline Preece on Den of Geek says, adding that Dead Men is "violent and genuinely scary again".
The film is "a lovely surprise", she continues, and should "remind fans what was so refreshing and entertaining about the Pirates series in the first place".
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales opens in the UK today.
