If you can’t get enough of Johnny Depp you’ll get plenty of him here. Captain Jack Sparrow is practically in every scene, every camera angle, and loving every black-eye-liner moment in his recurring, sometimes slurring, mate of a role. In its fourth chapter, Hollywood has made a smart choice in turning to musical maven Rob Marshall – Nine, Chicago – to direct. This choice lightens the second and third installments leaving this to feel more more like the Disneyland theme park ride. Hans Zimmer delivers a big explosive soundtrack taking the doom and gloom out of past sequels and instead what we have is playful, silly and full of surprises. When the story opens we quickly discover that Captain Sparrow needs a crew even if he has to steal somebody else’s. His mission: to find the Fountain of Youth a la Ponce de Leon dead for two hundred years now. But in order to do that he needs some crazy concoction that includes the tear – happy tears only – of a mermaid. Blackbeard is played by Ian McShane and apparently he has a daughter (Penelope Cruz) and coincidentally she was an ex-flame-gone-wrong of Sparrow’s. They bicker and quarrel, but they sword fight and they flirt, too. And then there’s peg-legged Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) headed for the Fountain of Youth as well, and what we have is a silly scavenger hunt of non-threatening proportions since nobody has any real urgency and they spend most of their time delivering amusing one liners amidst a lot of double-crossing. Cruz has eyeliner and sweaty tanned features to match Depp’s, and while they’re the perfect pirate-meets-girl couple, she’s somehow miscast and one-dimensional in her role. That said, with the way they’ve set up the ending, she’ll undoubtedly be back. Three tiaras
