Mini-Movie Review: Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

OK, Cine-Sib, here's the beginning of a flood of movie reviews.  I'm saving my time and energy for in-depth reviews of really good flicks, so I'm giving just mini-reviews to bits of fluff that I recently watched.  Let's start with the latest Pirates sequel, shall we?

Lost at sea.

Johnny Depp and his guyliner invade the movie screen for a fourth outing!  Actually, it was better -- way better -- than the last sequel and, really, the sequel before that.  OK, OK, that's not saying a darn thing, since the sequels were so awful compared to the rollicking, unexpected fun of the first Pirates movie in 2003.  

The good:  

• Rejoice, people, because neither Orlando Bloom nor Keira Knightley are in this flick!  Yeah, they were great in the first one and they can do fine work in other movies, but they were simply awful in the sequels.
• In Bloom and Knightley's absence, you get awesome British character actor Ian McShane (lately of TV's "Deadwood" and "Kings") as Blackbeard and -- reason enough for the Cine-Sib to sprint to the cinema -- Spanish hottie Penelope Cruz as Blackbeard's pirate queen of a daughter, Angelica.
• Cameo appearances by Keith Richards and ... wait for it ... Judi Dench (!)
• A soundtrack that might be worth getting because it features the Mexican guitar duo of Rodrigo y Gabriela, who are splendid.  Who doesn't love some Spanish guitar?
• Some cool action sequences
• Mermaids

The bad:

• Disjointed and ludicrous (even for a pirate flick) relationship between Jack Sparrow and Angelica
• Disjointed and ludicrous (even for a pirate flick) plot about the Fountain of Youth.
• Mermaids (yes, I know I put them in the "good" section too)
• Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) is back.  Yawn. And he looks horrible.
• Why do everybody's relationships seem arbitrary and unbelievable?

MM gives this flick a C (UPDATE: OK , I just re-graded it in comparison with the delightful first Pirates movie, and I busted my initial grade down to a C ... and I think I'm being generous with the C.  End of update).  Look, the fourth Pirates flick is entertaining nonsense for 2 hours that you'll never bother to buy the Blu-ray of.  (Yes, before you ask, I do own the first Pirates flick.)  But hey!  It is rather entertaining, and it's way better than previous summer idiocies of soul-sucking incompetence like Terminator: Salvation or Angels and Demons (or this summer's Green Lantern -- but that's another review).  Besides, it's fun just to see actors of such top caliber as Rush, McShane, Depp, and Dench running around in a silly summer popcorn flick -- we can't grub for Oscars in every movie we do!

"Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" has a Rotten rating of 33% from RottenTomatoes.  It runs 2 hours 17 minutes and is rated PG-13.