Republished from the show notes of my other site, Fuds on Film.
Salad Bar’s Revenge, or Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid as it’s known in many other territories.
It is presumably still fashionable, as it has been since the before the first of these films, to bash Pirates of the Caribbean simply for existing. I however, will not. Since we are not exactly deluged with these films, this coming 6 years after whatever the last one was, and cinema not otherwise delivering a great deal of 18th century swashbuckling fare, I’m more than happy to take these films as a welcome change of pace from the relentless hi-tech gadgetry and such that the other Disney live action studios have brought us.
What I cannot claim, however, is that whatever the last film was called, or, to be honest, any of the rest them, are particularly memorable films. So quite why the Black Pearl is in a tiny bottle, or why Orlando Bloom’s Will Turner was cursed to an eternity on the erroneously named Flying Dutchman, which sails, was something I’d have had to go and Google. Or, alternatively, not bother and accept it at face value because, well, it’s a Pirates of the Caribbean film, and not really worth expending the effort of thought on.
While the current fate of the Pearl is causing Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) to hit the bottle – well, more so than usual – it’s Will’s fate that’s driving this plot as his son Henry (Brenton Thwaites) searches desperately to find a way to uncurse his father. Sparrow’s given some motivation to act when a bank heist goes awry, leading to the remnants of his crew deserting him. Broke, he trades in his magic compass doodad for a bottle of rum, which has the side effect of breaking yet another of the many curses that afflicted this time period.
This reckless act has allowed Jack’s very first nemesis, so crucial to Sparrow’s character development that he’s not been mentioned until the fifth film, Spanish Navy pirate hunter Captain Salad Bar (Javibar Bar Dem) to be released from the Devil’s Triangle, now as a spooky g-g-g-ghost. He’s resuming his mission to rid the seas of all pirates, not just Jack, but the current VP of Oceanic Piracy Endeavours, Captain Hector Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush), whose pirate fleet is now being rent asunder by Salad Bar.
Mixed up in all this is Kaya Scodelario’s Carina Smyth, a scientist following a map left by her father that’s put her on the same path as Turner Jnr, which through various machinations not worth getting into has all of the aforementioned teaming up to seek an artefact, Poseidon’s Trident, which supposedly has the power to banish all curses, which would mean the end of Salad Bar’s reign of terror and a return to the world for Will Turner.
So, like all the other films, a plot that’s largely cobbled together around the set-pieces rather than anything particularly cogent of itself. Unfortunately that’s rather the standard all of today’s blockbusters are at, with very little of these monstrous budgets being funnelled into the screenwriting, it seems. But, like pretty much everything you’d care to say about Salad Bar’s Revenge, it is now as it has always been, so throwing too much shade at it for doing exactly as you’d expect it to do seems like a waste of effort.
More transparently than most, perhaps, but like nigh-on every tentpole release these days this film is a spectacle delivery vector first, foremost and nigh-on only. Viewed in these terms, it does quite well, with some quite lovely effects work from the large scale battles to the smaller scale effects used on the likes of Bardem’s hair, which floats around as though he’s still underwater. The action itself is relatively well handled, if not spectacularly so, and I’m sure for most that’s enough to call it a minor success and file it away with the rest of the series in whatever part of your brain movies go to be swiftly forgotten.
It would, however, be remiss of us not to point out that it suffers from a number of flaws, even if, again, it’s mostly the same flaws as the rest of the series. Depp’s Keith Richards act returns, although it’s perhaps a little more subdued here, with Sparrow more than ever seeming more like a passenger than protagonist. Which means that rather like the first, more of the actual driving of events must come from Scodelario, who is perfectly fine, and Brenton Thwaites, who is not.
Last we heard of young Thwaites was him stinking up the joint in Gods of Egypt, and he’s just as much of a Quaidian non-entity here. Which, given that he’s supposed to be Orlando Bloom’s son, might be a solid piece of casting, but its still harmful to the film as it stands. The best I can say about his charisma-free performance is that, well, given the sort of film he’s in, his performance either good or bad is not particularly important to the overall film.
To balance that out, along with Depp’s decent turn, although he’s probably getting too old for this schtick, is much more engaging support from Javier Bardem and Geoffrey Rush, and the always dependable Kevin McNally.
And, well, so it goes. There’s a bunch of minor things that annoy me I could dribble on about for some time, particularly Paul McCartney’s eye-rolling cameo as Sparrow’s uncle, but it’s not really worth anyone’s attention. By this point in time, you know if you’re in the market for another Pirates of the Caribbean film or not, and as someone who was, it was a perhaps marginally disappointing but largely as expected way to pass a few hours.
There is something about films such as this where I’m not all that bothered one way or the other about them that lends itself to writing rather more negatively than I necessarily feel just to spice up the podcast, and I’ve probably fallen foul of that here. Pirates 5 was okay, but in a world where films better than okay exist, it’s hard to get too excited about it.