There's one clear winner in all this, and that's Tim Powers. In that this film is nominally "Suggested by" his book "On Stranger Tides", an occult pirate tale which involves Blackbeard and The Fountain Of Youth. And however much money Tim Powers got, he got it for the title, and those two concepts. Nothing else seems to have made it through into the film intact. Both of the concepts are public domain by reason of being a real life person, and a well established legendary concept. So Disney has given a man a fat stack of cash for the words "On Stranger Tides."
And, amusingly, these are actually the least strange tides that Jack Sparrow has been sailing for a good long time. Yes, fine, he's going to an island home to mermaids and a magical water source, but last time he'd gone beyond the realms of death. So really, this film should be On Tamer Tides.
So then, the plot; There is a legendary Fountain Of Youth, and its whereabouts and method of use have come to light. Everybody wants it, where Everybody is defined as the British (sending Capt. Barbossa, now a privateer working for the crown), the Spanish (sending some people who don't really get names or a lot of dialogue) and Blackbeard (played by Lovejoy). There's a bit of a scavenger hunt, as there's four things you need to have, or need to know in order to use the fountain, and everyone's busily stealing them off each other.
The film itself is the usual for a film of this type, i.e. one which some exec somewhere ordered off a pizza menu, and which everyone concerned just baked to order without any concern for whether it actually works. Starts in London with a big chase scene, then some bits at sea, then some bits on an island, all of which are just inevitable one-after-the-other setpieces which rollercoaster us towards the conclusion without ever really feeling like vital bits of the plot.
It's hard to criticise Pirates for behaving like a rollercoaster, given how much actual rollercoaster there is in its DNA. What is worthy of criticism is that there's bits of it that really drag. Like you made a rollercoaster and put a section of it in the middle that just pootles along on the flat for a while before pulling its finger out and getting back to the loops and big drops.
The performances are what you've come to expect by now, but certainly no more than that. I think Geoffrey Rush has pretty much got bored by now, in particular. Some of the lines are good, but nothing much you'll be quoting incessantly as with the first film.
There's an adage in film-making, I understand, which states that a sequel, to be considered successful, should take 60% of the box office of the last outing. And while this isn't a film without a redeeming feature, it's clear that it was made solely with that ambition.
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