Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge * (2017, Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Javier Bardem, Brenton Thwaites, Kaya Scodelario) – Movie Review

Johnny Depp returns for a fifth, and supposedly (and hopefully) last time as Captain Jack Sparrow, who finds that deadly ghost pirates led Captain Salazar (Javier Bardem) have escaped from the Devil’s Triangle, plotting to kill every pirate. (This is just a variant on Captain Barbossa previously being a ghost pirate, which is something else that didn’t work very well. You know, ghost pirates just aren’t very scary.)

For some reason, Jack’s only hope of staying alive lies in seeking out the legendary Trident of Poseidon that bestows control over the seas, and he sets out to sea on his old vessel with his old ship-mates Gibbs and Scrum (Kevin McNally, Stephen Graham) for the trident.

Along the way, Jack meets up with a nice new couple of younger folk, Henry Turner and Carina Smyth (Brenton Thwaites, Kaya Scodelario), his old nemesis Captain Hector Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush), and his uncle (Paul McCartney).

[Spoiler alert] It turns out that Henry Turner is the 17-year-old son of Will Turner and that Carina Smyth is Carina Barbossa, daughter of old Captain Hector. This should be an interesting development, or even two interesting developments, but the film cannot find any ways to make it so, just falling back on falling over.

The movie is both slick and slack at the same time. There is way too much slapstick and falling over, and falling into and through stuff, and of course way, way too much CGI. Though, with all the CGI fairy dust, it is a smart looking movie.

Both Depp and the script feel slack and on auto-pilot. You feel they’d like to be making an effort but it just isn’t in them. It is not really anyone’s fault, it’s just that the franchise is played out and should have stopped after the first trilogy.

Thwaites and Scodelario are pleasant and have a lot to do, but they make little impression as their roles are so blandly written. However, the 27-year-old Australian actor Thwaites does a good job of seeming 17, English and feisty. Rush goes through his pirate schtick one more time, amusingly enough, but we have seen it a few times already, and Bardem is just a CGI boogeyman with a ‘funny’ foreign accent.

[Spoiler alert] Former series stars Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley make eerie, uncomfortable cameo appearances as Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann at the end of the movie. It’s meant to be charming but it is just awkward.

Anyway, all that should put a final stop to Pirates of the Caribbean. Yes, with the score thumping away endlessly, directors Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg’s film-making is over-wrought, but then that is not such a bad thing as it kind of has to be, to keep afloat. And yes Jeff Nathanson’s story and screenplay are unimaginative and under-wrought in a movie with a full cargo of the kind of silly lines and sillier sight gags that seem to be required. But then Nathanson’s after delivering what this daft series is all about.

Alas, there’s no buried treasure in Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge (also known as Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales – Bardem utters the magic words  ‘Dead Men Tell No Tales’ just before the UK title comes up as ‘Salazar’s Revenge’). Some teenagers might be happy, but then they are not always as easily entertained, or easily fooled as some adults think.

Can we now have a serious pirate movie, please?

© Derek Winnert 2017 Movie Review

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com