Fourth Pirates flick long but fun

Shiver me timbers! There’s more marble-mouthed mayhem from Johnny Depp and Disney, thanks to the baffling continuation of the movie franchise based on a theme park ride.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is the fourth in a series that seems to get progressively longer with each new instalment. Each has a runtime clocking in at two-and-a-half hours or more. With this one on the table now, they all add up to exactly 10 hours of confusing storylines and impenetrable dialogue.

Has anybody ever explained or figured out why these stories can’t be told faster? They are undeniably the most long-winded swashbuckler flicks ever. Aren’t we lucky that Pirates 5 and 6 are already slated for 2013 and 14?

In this latest incarnation, Captain Jack Sparrow is searching for an impostor who has been using his name to put together a crew to sail in search of the Fountain of Youth. King George II (Richard Griffiths) enslaves the real Sparrow to navigate an expedition for the mysterious location before the rival Spaniards get to it first. No problem, except that Captain Hector Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) will take the helm.

Sparrow escapes, naturally, and discovers that the false Sparrow is Angelica (PenĂ©lope Cruz), his spurned ex-lover who also just happens to be the daughter of the ruthless and supernatural pirate Blackbeard (Ian McShane). Sparrow is enlisted to Blackbeard’s crew for the Fountain. Frankly, the theatre should have provided Coles’ Notes just so the audience could follow along.

That being said, I do enjoy the characters and their adventures on the high seas. It’s all just good old plain ridiculous fun. Pirates and mermaids and swordfights and treasure and strange creatures. It’s nice to entertain those reminiscences every few years or so, but abbreviating them so that we can get on with our adult lives would be much better.

The problem is that there’s really no tone. Is it a serious drama or campy misadventure or straight up comedy? Who knows? Certainly not director Rob Marshall (nor did Gore Verbinski, director of the first three Pirates, before him) and definitely not the audience. It just doesn’t have any sense of itself and it doesn’t matter how wholeheartedly Depp chews his way through his scenes.

The pacing is uneven and the logic is full of holes. If the editors had done their jobs then they could easily have cut at least 15 minutes away and tightened up the story as a way to batten down the hatches so to speak.