pirates of the caribbean - on stranger tides

I was a little perplexed by on stranger tides.

I suppose I should make a bit of a confession that I'm not quite a big a fan of the first film than seems to be the general consensus.  In particular Johnny Depp's performance as Jack Black doesn't really do that much for me - I found him quite difficult to understand, in particular.

I should also probably note that I hadn't appreciated this was a "reboot".

Weird - I've just had the strongest sense of deja vu.  I was suddenly convinced I'd already written and posted this review (it's a good while since I watched the rental as I'm a fair few weeks behind) but I've checked and I certainly haven't posted it on the blog.  If I've written it before then I've either deleted it or lost it.

I guess also there's a point there that reboots seem to be "the thing" at the moment.  Well, that and pointless 3D.  I guess rebooting something is really just the modern phrase as they've been remaking films in Hollywood for ages.  The distinction they're trying to make is that you reboot a franchise, with the aim that you will then make further sequels for your reboot.  In a normal remake you're just making the same thing over.

Of course some reboots are also remakes - the recent spider man film is, I understand, basically a remake wearing a reboot jacket.

Anyway, the point is that on stranger tides is essentially a reboot.  Well, that's what it says on the sites I looked at anyway - what I actually experienced was a similar sense of confusion I did for resident evil damnation, which I watched shortly before this film.  By that I mean that I felt confused as to whether this was meant to be a proper sequel (the story was unconnected, but several of the characters from the previous films are in this one, but, adding to my confusion, some of them are somewhat different and some of the actors re-appear, but playing different roles) or if it was a separate adventure, just using the same characters.

Discovering it was a reboot didn't really help, as in that case they seem to have picked a few bits out of the previous films and carried them forward, but then felt free to dump other things.  What they've picked also seems fairly random, rather than sort of being the best bits.  Perhaps they relate back to the original Disney ride the best?

Anyway, the real point here is that I felt rather disorientated by the film story and character-wise, but then to make things worse the film itself was very loud and brash and bombastic and unfortunately the plot was a little bit confused too.

It was also very long - another victim of this trend of making what should be fun action films be two hour long and doing so by sticking in and extending pointless action sequences.

I think, overall, you can tell I wasn't hugely enamoured.