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This article was published 26/05/2017 (3110 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s been six years since the fourth movie in the Pirates of the Caribbean series, the one subtitled On Stranger Tides, sailed into local theatres. It was beginning to look as if Disney Studios had keelhauled the franchise inspired by an amusement-park ride, leaving Johnny Depp to make such forgettable flops as The Lone Ranger, The Rum Diary, Dark Shadows and Transcendence. Out of respect for Depp, the film Mortdecai will only be known as the movie whose name won’t be mentioned.

Some time opened up in Depp’s schedule and he’s slipped back into his raccoon-eyes makeup to return to the role of lovable lush Capt. Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. Right off the bat there’s trouble, because the franchise has been loaded with dead men telling tales in the form of ghost pirates, and this one is no different. So the name is a little misleading.

And that is the biggest clue to what goes wrong with this fifth adventure on the high seas. Jeff Nathanson’s script is as choppy as an ocean during a hurricane, bouncing on waves of bad puns, cheap jokes, convoluted family matters and a sea myth that makes as much sense as taking a woodpecker on a canoe ride.

Nathanson strains to create emotional moments and has the same number of problems giving Sparrow anything fresh to say.

This is a summer movie where the design is supposed to be 98 per cent action, one per cent writing and one per cent trying to come up with ways to make the 3D version have enough eye-popping moments to make the film worth the extra cost. Too much time was wasted on the writing and 3D ideas that keep getting in the way of the movie’s fun moments.

Dead Men features several high-energy action scenes staged by directors Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg (who have only minimal experience with feature films).

One sequence that includes dragging an entire building through the streets of Saint Martin has the kind of fast and furious look that has become the hallmark of summer movies. Any momentum from that spectacular scene gets lost when Nathanson tries to piece together all of the bits and pieces of ideas that went into the plot.

It would have helped if Nathanson had narrowed the cast of players. Sparrow is being chased by a young man trying to save his father from a sea curse, a female astronomer who everyone thinks is a witch, the grumpy Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush), the ghostly sea captain Salazar (Javier Bardem) and most of the British navy. There’s a sequence on an island where Sparrow is forced into a shotgun (or would it be shot-sword?) wedding. All that’s missing is a guest appearance by The Guardians of the Galaxy.

No cheap laugh is ignored. When Carina Smyth (played with spunky vigour by Kaya Scodelario) tells the crew of pirates that she’s a horologist, they don’t appreciate her skill with watches but assume she makes a living in the world’s oldest profession. Sadly, her energy is never channelled into enough good to give the film the strong female lead it needs. Also, the forced romance between her and Henry Turner (Brenton Thwaites) never shows the kind of sparks Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley showed during their Pirate days.

Dead Men shows life when there are big action scenes. If 30 minutes of jumbled mythology and cheesy writing had been cut, the movie would have had an action beat as driving as the heart-pounding score by Geoff Zanelli, who carries on the work done in the previous films by Hans Zimmer. Instead, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales mixes some fun moments with other scenes that leave the production high and dry.

At least it’s not nearly as bad as the film whose name shall not be mentioned.

— Tribune News Service