REVIEW - Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (NO SPOILERS)

I wanted to post this a few days ago but between exhaustion and lack of what to really say I am only just now getting to this.

IMDB Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

The fourth in Disney's Pirates movies. I managed to be lucky enough to see this on Tues. May 17, 2011, 3 days before release. A friend of mine got us in with the press.

Lots of strange happenings and going ons before the movie which I'd love to get into but for the most part you had to really be there to appreciate the amount of weird in the air that night. Let's just say between "free popcorn lady", "dragonball z lady", and some screaming pirates in VERY nice outfits, it was certainly, um, memorable. lol

Now, for the movie, hard to say a lot without ruining the story. I will say this though, sadly, it was my least favorite of the four movies. Yes, it was still hilarious. Yes it is worth seeing if you are a fan of these movies or Johnny Depp. Yes, Johnny Depp in IMAX 3D is awesome. My friend described my blabbering description of the movie as me attempting to say it was too linear. There was basically one story the whole movie and no subplots or diversity to the story. It had much less special effects and much less of an overall magical feel than the previous movies.

And they got rid of far too many of the old cast. Not only is there no Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and no Elizabeth Swan (Keira Knightley) but all the old characters were basically gone. There was of course no Davy Jones, no Norrington, no Weatherby Swan, no Bootstrap, or Tia Dalma (the voodoo lady), or the two funny guys the skinny one with the wooden eye that knew everything or his chubby goofy partner, whatever their names were. What your left with is basically, Capt. Jack Sparrow (Jonny Depp) and his first mate Joshamee Gibbs (Kevin McNally), Hector Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) and his British crew, Blackbeard (Ian McShane) and his first mate Angelica (Penelope Cruz). All basically doing the same thing heading the same way. And there is also a Spanish fleet that you see for maybe five minutes total in the movie.

It had a few exciting scenes but all-in-all it was kind of boring compared to all three other Pirates movies. That's not to say that the few exciting scenes aren't good.

Also, the 3D effect was not used as much as it could've been. I mean it didn't have the same kind of 3D awesomeness as say TRON Legacy. Can only even think of two very short scenes that really used the 3D effect for more than just for background depth.

Overall I'd say it was still a good movie, just not as good as the first three. But still far better than most movies out there. Worth seeing. Not necessarily a "must see in 3D" type of movie. Am pretty sure the 2D version of this would've been just as good.

One last little word on the strange occurrences prior to the movie. I don't know if it was a full moon or if these are regular people to the early premier movie showings or what the deal was but man there was some, odd people there. The screaming pirates were the more normal ones. Very unique crowd. As for those pirates, they had some awesome costumes. Clearly they spent hundreds if not thousands some of them. Very impressive, and yet annoying to me that the one time I go to a movie without some kind of cosplay larp thing going on and there's tons of people dressed up! I mean seriously, where are these people when I go dressed up to movies like TRON or Star Wars or Star Trek or the upcoming several superhero movies? Dangit! lmao