Director: Lucia Aniello
Writers: Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs
Stars: Rachel Weisz, Sam Claflin, Holliday Grainger, Iain Glen

Synopsis: Scarlett Johansson, Kate McKinnon, Zoë Kravitz

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Watching Rough Night will probably render a rough night for a lot of audiences. Lucia Aniello’s directorial debut is overly clichéd with dry characters and a tedious narrative. If you are waiting for a movie that will match the caliber of Kate McKinnon’s comedic abilities, you will unfortunately have to wait a little bit longer.

2017, in particular, looks very promising for women directors with several shattering genre expectations. Aniello – of Broad City fame – is still able to demonstrate her comedic strengths in similar ways that makes Broad City such a great and funny show. For example, Broad City is great in how it spreads its humor around, which Rough Night was able to achieve, but it lacks a consistency that stifles the overall experience.

As stated above, the plot really kicks in when a male stripper becomes involved, and if you’ve seen the trailer, you know bad things happen quickly. Let us backtrack, however, to how the girls get to this point. Jess (Scarlett Johansson) reunites with four of her best friends (Jillian Bell, Zoë Kravitz, Ilana Glazer, Kate McKinnon) reunite ten years later for a wild bachelorette weekend in Miami. The first 25 minutes is the same Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V of things we have seen many times before. I am all for flipping the script and showing that men are not, the only ones allowed to have this type of fun but will not defend poor execution.

The stripper scene itself, while some humor is to be had, it overall feels demeaning and is somewhat mean-spirited. Once the chaos unfolds, the movie takes a huge nose dive and tries its hardest to keep you entertained but merely does not work. There is side plot with Jess’ fiance, Peter, that involves diapers and sexual activity that does not work. The stripper essentially becomes a prop for most of the film and the way Aniello uses it comedically is hit or miss.

Rough Night is a comedy that relies heavily on dirty jokes that become excessive and tedious by the end. The film’s screenplay – written by Aniello and her partner Paul W. Downs – deploys some of its jokes in a way that feels rather regressive socially. Aniello is more than capable of making a pure comedy without the overuse of dirty comedy as a punchline. In the few moments where the film focuses on the camaraderie between the characters and tackles this idea about living in the past, that’s when the film is at its best, it just comes too late to make a difference.

Scarlet Johannsson does not have the same comedic chops as the other woman, and is outclassed in almost every way. Kate McKinnon and Ilana Glazer deliver the best two performances and show that you do not need crass humor all the time to be funny. Jillian Bell plays the same sex-driven, drug-snorting character she always does.

I expected much more from Aniello than this snooze fest. Broad City showcases her potential and hopefully she can find her voice in a more streamlined manner in the future.

Overall Grade: C

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It could not be more against the message that Cars want to send, but there is less sputtering when only Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) receives the attention. See what happened when Mater (Larry the Cable Guy), No. 95’s go-to tow-truck, was given all the lanes in the sequel? “More of what you love” never hurts, but Pixar bewilderingly applied that concept less to the drawing board and primarily to the toy shelves. Must be why Planes got the green light, and the less said about that project the better, even if the manufacturing was all Disney.

Imagine the shock when McQueen ends his third run with a blazing podium finish.

For all of his flair, fans and friends, Lightning is “fading, fading fast,” losing out to the next generation of souped-up and stylish Piston Cup Racers. The swiftest and sleekest of them all is Jackson Storm (Armie Hammer), owning a passive-aggressive, master-of-all attitude that would render him the cinematic Winklevoss twins’ vehicle of choice. While revving hard to avoid seeing instant nemesis’s tail-end, Lightning wrecks himself in a notably harrowing sequence featured in the first trailer. And although the sequence impresses through its intensity and loudness, it is first-time director (but experienced animator) Brian Fee’s lingering on the silence afterward that commits the events to memory. Whereas every moment the audio eases off in the first Cars is to highlight animated-automotive beauty, Cars 3 does that and concurrently install a resonant thematic note. A promise delivered: The new phase of our anthropomorphic stock car begins here.

Blast the nature of numbering things, for real, as the narrative of Cars 3 renders it the true Cars 2. That World Grand Prix and posse of lemons business is made-for-TV stuff. Should any element feels like they are about to expand the universe, writers Kiel Murray, Bob Peterson and Mike Rich will not include it. The approach is appropriate since “old out, new in” is the theme here; for McQueen to enter the new age he has to let go of certain things, whether they are tangible – like his Rust-eze sponsors, Rusty and Dusty (Tom and Ray Magliozzi) – and otherwise – days when skill determines winning chances and not Natalie Certain (Kerry Washington)’s statistics.

The minimizing serves up poignant parts where Lightning exhibits his newfound ability of self-reflect, which sometimes also doubles as Pixar beautifully paying tribute to Doc Hudson (the late Paul Newman), but it lessens the impact of Jackson as Lightning’s foil and his high-tech ilk as exterminators of racing’s senior figures.

“He’s obviously an impostor. He looks old and broken down. And with flabby tires,” mockingly remarks racer trainer Cruz Ramirez (Cristela Alonzo) straight to Lightning’s face in their first meet. The feisty canary yellow Jaguar-like is the Gunnery Sgt. Herman of high-end Rust-eze Training Center, albeit a firm believer on motivating others through fluffy clouds and car-eobics instead of colorful insults. Overlooking the facility is the silver-tongued suit Sterling (Nathan Fillion) who wishes to see Lightning revives his glory the “Chef Skinner” way: plastered on Rust-eze products.

Perfect doesn’t even begin to describe the casting of Alonzo and Fillion, the former’s passion-laden voice and the latter’s apparent channeling of his Browncoat persona really give their models a scene-chewing ability. Cruz gets to carry out most of the script’s jokes and an expected identity crisis moment – she wanted to be a racer until life intervened – but Fee designs these moments with efficiency in setting and lighting that the vocal performances’ emotions come through first.

As a creator of spectacle, however, Fee does not disappoint. A six-year break between the last installment and this equates to a fantastic tune-up of the cars’ sheen, the environments’ ever-photogenic trait and, most importantly, the cinematography. Cars 3 has a much more engaging, and at times borderline daring, camerawork that sees the velocity breaking the fourth wall and our eyes briefly believing Pixar’s pixels are reality. Look for the destruction derby sequence for a culmination of animation wizardry, hilarity and electricity as Lightning, under the muddy guise of Chester Wipplefilter, whipping around the figure-eight, dodging hyper cars and a crazed school bus (Lea DeLaria).

In Cars 3, variety is to the fun parts while purpose is to the closing. Legacy, as Stirling emphasizes, is important, and in this aspect the film locks down the best kind, one that sees Lightning becoming the truest sense of the word “leader.” Fee may have taken a page from the debut of this universe at this key part, but it is how the character’s arc discovers completion.

Needing an end point, too, is the Cars franchise. Fee has found the perfect spot. Should the returns of this film ignites the idea of “one next ride,” let’s hope Cruz will become real to get Pixar back on track by showing why the studio must push harder than its competitors: originality.

Or maybe a fluffy cloud will suffice.

Overall Grade: A-

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Hear our podcast review on Extra Film, coming soon.

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Director: Roger Michell
Writers: Daphne Du Maurier (novel), Roger Michell (adaptation)
Stars: Rachel Weisz, Sam Claflin, Holliday Grainger, Iain Glen

Synopsis: A young Englishman plots revenge against his mysterious, beautiful cousin, believing that she murdered his guardian. But his feelings become complicated as he finds himself falling under the beguiling spell of her charms.

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The mysterious Rachel (Rachel Weisz) arrives in Cornwall to meet her cousin Phillip (Sam Claflin), the adopted son of her recently deceased husband. Phillip is determined to subject Rachel to an intolerable visit having received frenzied, scrawled letters from the late Ambrose revealing that Rachel is a danger to his life, only to find on her arrival that she is a beautiful and charming young woman with a generous spirit. Phillip is intoxicated by Rachel and soon alters the terms of his inheritance to give the family home to her when he turns 25 years of age. He is under Rachel’s spell; she is his sickness, but is she all she appears?

The most striking thing about Roger Michell’s adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier’s novel is the outstanding beauty of the cinematography. The film presents its audience with breathtaking sweeping shots of the Cornish coast imbued with sandy, stony hues. The contrast of the film’s frequent use of dark rooms with flickering candlelight to the dazzling brightness of the cliffs and the daylight sky is jarring. It makes us uneasy; as does everything else.
The film’s score invites the audience to give over to paranoia and doubt Rachel’s intentions as much as Phillip does not. Rael Jones’ soundtrack is foreboding to say the very least and does a great deal of the work in surrounding Rachel’s presence with an air of distrust. Of course, Du Maurier’s compelling narrative conjures a sense of suspicion too; who swears revenge on someone only to immediately fall head over heels for them and sign everything away in the name of love?

Michell limits what his audience are able to see, creating a claustrophobic space that reflects the sudden intimacy of the central two characters. Whilst faces and expressions are often only visible by dim candlelight, the shot-reverse-shots of conversations are very shallow in focus. We see a face, a flame, pearls bouncing down a staircase and often have access to little else. It is a suspicious love story; a story that is about all the things we don’t know as well as what we see. There is an air of suppressed eroticism that is beautifully handled for the film’s first two acts until, unfortunately, a scene in which the pair are depicted rutting away in a field of bluebells. The mystique somewhat dies from hereon.

A crucial plot point to the film’s final revelation is laid on so thickly that you will see it coming a mile off and as beautiful as the film is aesthetically this is unfortunately not mirrored in the dialogue, which is clunky in places and occasionally weighed down by plot exposition. There is also moment of sudden coarse language from Phillip’s manservant Seecombe (Tim Barlow) that has no place in the film; it is entirely out of keeping with the 19th Century setting and baffling given that the object of his outburst is a Christmas tree.

Rachel Weisz is a fantastic casting choice for the curiously enticing Rachel and she is such a fascinating screen presence that the other performances get a bit lost in her shadow and in the fragmented plot, played out through conversations that alternate between dark bedrooms and beaches. Holliday Granger’s performance stands out second to Rachel Weisz’s as Louise, the young girl Phillip ought to marry. With limited screen time Granger delivers a well-rounded performance as the supportive friend whose suspicions are shared with the audience and whose heartbreak at Phillip’s new affections are painfully masked.

The film was a few plot and script tweaks away from an erotic and eerie gothic whirlwind of a film but, alas, My Cousin Rachel is a little more forgettable than forbidding.

Overall Grade: B-

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Hear our podcast review on Extra Film, coming soon.

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Director: Patty Jenkins
Writers: Allan Heinberg (screenplay), Zack Snyder (story by)
Stars: Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Robin Wright, Connie Nielsen, David Thewlis

Synopsis: Before she was Wonder Woman she was Diana, princess of the Amazons, trained warrior. When a pilot crashes and tells of conflict in the outside world, she leaves home to fight a war to end all wars, discovering her full powers and true destiny.

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Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman is the best installment in the DC Extended Universe and also the first incredible summer blockbuster of 2017. With a charismatic cast, thrilling action sequences and just an absolutely enjoyable film all around, Jenkins and the rest of the Wonder Woman team seem to have broken the DC mold. Crafting a heartfelt and honest story, Wonder Woman takes us back to the classic superhero origin story.

When Diana (Gal Gadot), princess of the Amazons, rescues a World War 1 pilot from drowning she is thrust into a war that is meant to fulfill her destiny. Chasing down Ares, the God of War, Diana begins her hunt for the malicious god right in the heat of the first world war. Chock full of emotional moments and powerful storytelling elements, Wonder Woman has a little bit of something for everybody.

The first thing that Wonder Woman smacks you with is how straight forward its story is. Instead of taking the usual DC approach, shoving in a ton of pointless characters, attempting to open up pointless subplots, etc. Patty Jenkins and her team go with a simple, straight forward origin story. Focusing solely on how Diana began her life as a young amazon girl who desperately wants to train in the ways of battle. To her being trained vigorously to become the greatest warrior of them all. And finally to her courageous and heroic effort and ultimately defeat of Ares. Wonder Woman does not take the focus off of Diana for even the slightest moment, the film begins with her in the spotlight and ends with her in the spotlight.

Which leads into the incredible performance that Gal Gadot gives as Diana. Gadot is absolute dynamite on screen. With her innocence to the outside world, I.E. the ice cream scene, to her being just an absolute badass in every single fight scene, Gadot masterfully takes up the Wonder Woman mantle and wears it proudly. Giving emotion on literal opposite ends of the spectrum: joy, anger, sadness, anything and everything in between Gadot nails it. Her nuanced facial expressions and subtle vocal switches when delivering dialogue prove that Gadot is a force to be reckoned with and deserves to wrangle in every role ever.

The one hurdle that Wonder Woman does not make it over is the runtime. The past few DC films typically go on a tad too long and Wonder Woman also sadly drags a little. Now this does not ruin any of the overall enjoyment or impact of the film, there are just a few dragging moments that could be cut either shorter or completely out. That being said every other flaw that past DCEU films have had, are no where near any of the content in Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman is its own cinematic universe and soars high above Suicide Squad, Batman VS Superman AND Man of Steel.

One thing that is clear and present in this film is sustainability. A problem shown with all superhero movies lately, not just DC, is the ability to have that film stand on its own. Typically the superhero films that release now a days must set up their larger universe and have a loose ending that will allow setup for the next film in said universe. Wonder Woman does not take this approach. Showing Diana in present day, to the entirety of her origin and then returning to present day Diana, the film bookends flawlessly. With no plot holes or loose ends that they have to worry about tying up in the next film, Wonder Woman ends on a perfect note. Creating a world that is solely Gal Gadot’s and Patty Jenkins’ is both refreshing to see and immaculately crafted.

Wonder Woman is a near perfect superhero film, that lacks just a bit in its runtime. Despite its few dragging scenes, the action is intense and entertaining, the story is simple and emotional, Gal Gadot is absolutely dynamite in the role, and everything about the film is spectacular. Proving the point even further that we should have both female lead action films and female directed blockbusters, Wonder Woman does not disappoint in anyway shape or form. Resurrecting the DCEU and giving hope to both fans and non-fans of the DCEU, Wonder Woman is the first smash hit summer blockbuster.

Overall Grade: A

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Hear our podcast review on Episode 224:

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Director: Trey Edward Shults
Writers: Trey Edward Shults
Stars: Joel Edgerton, Christopher Abbott, Carmen Ejogo, Riley Keough

Synopsis: Secure within a desolate home as an unnatural threat terrorizes the world, a man has established a tenuous domestic order with his wife and son, but this will soon be put to test when a desperate young family arrives seeking refuge.

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I’ll be honest; initially after seeing It Comes At Night I was perplexed at what I saw and was unsure of what to make of it. The film weighed on me all night, and after wrestling with it for awhile, things became apparent. Trey Edward Shults has created an experience that will cause nightmares. If Shults does not cause your mind fear, then you must have skipped out on Krisha last year. Shults’ style latches onto our emotions like a vise grip, and in It Comes At Night the grip is tightening.

It Comes At Night is one of those rare movies that will make you ask questions about what was going on, and you’re never exactly sure where it’s going to go. It’s a testament to Schults’ style that varying opinions will come from this film. It Comes At Night is not only a viscerally gripping horror film aesthetically, but an astounding character study that touches on different emotional and physical psyches of a person facing the end of civilization. The varying perspectives offer an extensive look into the dark recesses of our minds where we start to question the every action in the film.

Travis (Kelvin Harrison, Jr.) lives with lives in a secured and heavily armed home with his parents Paul and Sarah (Joel Edgerton and Carmen Ejogo.) The opening sequence is fantastic and shows the great lengths Paul is willing to go through to protect his family. The film plays out like most movies in this setting; we see the day-to-day life of this family, and with the limited dialogue between them all we can feel the tension start to creep into our skin. One terrifying night things start change and eventually it leads them into meeting another young family. The addition to the household adds more paranoia and pairing that with an eerie score makes things interesting.

The Red Door is featured heavily in the promotion of this film and rightfully so as it’s the only way in and out of this boarded up house. Most of the intense scenes happen in the narrow hallway in front of it. If you’re expecting jump scares or zombies, you will be disappointed. In terms of pace and character, It Comes At Night is more in line with The Witch – another A24 horror film – that relies on gripping tension that methodically builds over the course of the film.

Without spoiling too much, the film is at its most visceral in nightmare sequences that frequently appear throughout the film. These dreams have a different feel and look to them to distinguish them from the main story. It’s the paranoia manifesting itself in Travis’ real-life that makes those scenes uncomfortable to watch.

Taking place in the woods is scary enough, Schults ups the ante by having light coming from lanterns or lights mounted to guns. The barely illuminated scenes will constantly have you peeking into the darkness wondering what’s going to happen next.

What lengths are you willing to go to protect your family? Not giving us much about the characters pays off for Schults in the second act. There is an event happens that causes a rift between the two families; whose side do we believe? The questions this film raises and how it forces these characters to react is quite fascinating.

It Comes At Night is another masterpiece for A24 and one that puts Trey Edward Schults as a major player in this genre.

Overall Grade: A

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Hear our podcast review on Episode 225, coming soon.

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Director: Joachim Rønning, Espen Sandberg
Writers: Jeff Nathanson, Terry Rossio
Stars: Michael Fassbender, Katherine Waterston, Danny McBride, Billy Crudup

Synopsis: Captain Jack Sparrow searches for the trident of Poseidon while being pursued by an undead sea captain and his crew.

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Pirates of the Caribbean returns with its fifth installment and a minor reboot of cast with Kaya Scodelario and Brenton Thwaites joining the team.

Pirates of the Carribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales begins with young Henry Turner raising the sunken Flying Dutchman on which his father, Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) has been imprisoned. They have a brief bonding session, some plot is explained (Henry needs the Trident of Poseidon to free Will), then the Flying Dutchman is reclaimed by the sea and you Henry left without his dad again.

A caption: nine years later.

So Pirates starts (again) with an older Henry Turner (now played by Brenton Thwaites) as a rebellious crew member on a naval ship that accidentally sails into a hole in the cliffs called “The Devils Triangle” where young Turner meets Alfonso Salazar (Javier Bardem). Some more plot is explained (Salazar can only be freed from his curse when Jack Sparrow gives up his compass because Jack tricked him when he was living, and he now wants revenge), young Turner is cast adrift with orders to find Sparrow and steal his compass.

So Pirates starts (for a third time) with young female scientist Corinna (Kaya Scodelario) being charged with being a witch and sentenced to death in the town of St Maarten. She’s an orphan whose only possession is a book written by Gallileo (yes, that one) which he describes his search for the Trident of Poseidon in an elaborate code that has become known as the map that no man can read.

Anyway, Corinna makes a break for it during the opening of the town’s new bank, a ceremony that is interrupted by the discovery of a drunk Jack Sparrow in the bank’s vault, and cue a very large scale, imaginative and well executed chase sequence.

Jack’s crew desert him due to the failure of the robbery and he chooses to spend the days drunk in a pub, paying for his last bottle of rum with his magic compass, an act that releases Salazar and his crew from their cave in the cliffs and allows them to roam the seas again. Meanwhile young Turner is washed up on shore babbling something about the Trident of Poseidon and promptly arrested, but is freed by Corinna (who overhead the young man’s witterings when he was brought ashore) while she gets arrested and sentenced to death (again). Jack is arrested for something else (probably being annoying) and also locked up. Young Turner breaks into the prison to speak to her, ends up discovering Jack Sparrow who he informs of Salazar’s intention to exact revenge. Sparrow realises he’s given away his compass and unintentionally freed his Spanish nemesis so he too needs to find the Trident of Poseidon as it contains all the curses of the sea and, once found, could be used to break them. Aka more plot is explained.

So Pirates starts again with another elaborate, large scale, imaginative and well executed action sequence to break Jack and Corinna out of execution and the motley band of heroes can then head off in search of the Trident.

Then Geoffrey Rush turns up and decides he’ll help the Navy (led by David Wenham – looking lost) hunt down Jack and sets off in pursuit.

So Pirates starts again, but this time as a sort of chase movie.

By the way, there are no spoilers in the above – that’s the first forty minutes.

Dead Men Tell No Tales is a very handsome film to look at, the special effects and production design are extremely fine. It is also a very expensive film – it genuinely looks like a lot of money was spent making it. These are traits to be lauded. The script is better written than many films, everyone is trying hard. The music is very good.

However all of these good intentions are squandered on a film that is stiflingly, witheringly, perishingly dull. It’s SO boring. I cannot recall ever being so bored in a cinema. Usually even bad films have something to quicken the pulse, or raise a smile, or have, I dunno, some sense of entertainment. Shoot, even legendary turkey Gods of Egypt had a better sense of entertaining its audience than this one.

Part of the blame has to lie with the script which is surprisingly well written – as in it has a lively grasp of language and good use of English. The problem is that all the jokes and witty wordplay just fall utterly flat. The wit is sub-Carry-On level, but without the history and snide performances that provide the humor in that venerable series. The innuendo is cringe-worthy, below the level of the seaside-postcard and to cap it all this crushingly boring level of humor is delivered without any form of comedic punch or timing. Some of the jokes are even followed by someone on screen laughing, as if a cue for us, the audience, to do the same. I didn’t. Neither did my colleagues in the screening I attended. In a film that is thought of as a comedy adventure, this raised exactly two thin smiles.

The first half of the film contains two huge action sequences, which are elaborately staged, filled with excellent stunts and one hugely imaginative guillotine gag that is genuinely inspired. But they too fall utterly flat. Dull, boring, unexciting – every minute of action is played for laughs, but the film’s crushing lack of humor ensures that these sequences are not remotely funny. In the original ride, visitors are showing individual scenes loosely based on pirate history – pirates drinking in a bar, pirates storming a castle, and so on – and these action sequences feel like the same sort of thing. They don’t really serve the plot much, but they are at least interesting. It is telling that as the plot begins to overpower the film, these sort of sequences disappear to be replaced by death-by-CGI action sequences. It seems a crushing waste of the talents of the stunt team, the production designers and the directors who tried, really tried, to create these sequences and to make them fun and exciting, but ultimately other elements of the production have overwhelmed their best intentions.

The plot is stunningly complex and convoluted. The first film was largely nonsensical, but now the series’ convoluted mythology has tied itself in complicated knots, all of which needs to be explained. It, sadly, falls to the actors to routinely explain to the audience what is going on and why, which has the unfortunate effect of reduces the screen time available to serve character. All of the characters, with the exception of Sparrow, are very poorly served.

Which brings us to the other major problem with the film, the Depp in the room if you will: Captain Jack Sparrow. Sparrow was always an acquired taste, the over-the-top mannerisms and drunken acting- all slurring and mad hand flapping – entranced some viewers and alienated others. While he was largely well served by the first film (which I remember enjoying, if not exactly loving), he’s just became more and more annoying as the film series has continued. As the plots got more complicated, as the cast numbers ballooned, the audiences were expected to find in Depp and his performance all the film’s entertainment: look, here’s Jack scared of a monkey; look here’s Jack drunkenly running away from a fight; look here’s Jack trying, and failing, to romance a ‘lovely’. It’s a lot for such a shallow, irredeemable character to carry, and the film fails in this respect.

Jack Sparrow was always a pathetic individual, a useless pirate who somehow, often accidentally, always against his wishes, saves the day. The conflict of the first film was that Sparrow did not want to save the day but frequently ended up in situations where his innate decency ensured that he had to step up, even when he really didn’t want to. The conflict for the other characters was persuading Sparrow to assist them in their quest. This is fairly a complex, and interesting, dynamic. The hero of the first film was Orlando Bloom’s noble, resourceful Will Turner, not Johnny Depp’s shambolic, pathetic pirate. Depp was the light relief.

However Sparrow was the breakout character of the first film and for the next two sequels the writers had to covert their shambolic non-hero into the hero of a series of films that was rapidly expanding in scope. To do this, the writers have relied increasingly on odd mystical inventions: Jack has a magic compass, Jack is king of the pirates, voodoo priestesses, mystical witches and so on. Which has led directly to the series’ impossibly complicated mythology, and the lengthy exposition speeches from the cast that are required to explain it all.

Thing is, as the series’ plot disappears up its own wazoo with plot convolution atop convolution, and all the other characters exist solely to explain the story, all the film has left in its armory is to present Depp, as Sparrow, in the hope he is funny enough to carry the film. He isn’t, not by a long way. He simply drains the life out of the film. The character is too weak to carry the weight that is expected of it, the performance not good enough, the humor too thin. Everything Depp throws into the character, all those verbal and visual mannerisms, comes off as irritating. It is a tiresome, annoying performance.

How about the other actors? Well, it’s a mixed bag:
Bardem is adequate in a one-dimensional role which doesn’t really give the great actor much to work with. Salazar is a thin character and relies entirely on Jack Sparrow for his motivation, so see above for the problems that brings.

Geoffrey Rush is phoning in his performance, we’ve seen this hundreds of times before. Again the character only exists because of the plot, not the world. Barbossa, a clearly successful pirate, is apparently willing to risk all of his accrued wealth in pursuit of Sparrow for reasons that didn’t, to me at least, seem clear. So his character too relies on Jack Sparrow for his motivation so, er, see above.

Brenton Thwaites is bland, in the same way Orlando Bloom was bland in the original, so he’s actually a fine fit for this series. However his character also relies entirely on Jack Sparrow for his motivation so, …. oh you get the idea.

Kaya Scodelario is, by far, the best thing in this film. She is helped by her character not having to rely on Depp’s creation for her motivation and her story is an interesting one. Well, for this film it’s interesting, we have all seen this particular character arc many, many times before. However Scodeario is earnest, spunky, bright and perky and an appealing presence. She delivers her lines snappily and with purpose, even when they are nonsense exposition, and she is a bright star in an ocean of misery.

Despite all the above criticism I have yet to address the single worst offense in the film’s litany of failings: the celebrity cameo.

Ever since the first Pirates appeared, people noticed that Depp’s performance appeared to be modeled on The Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards. By the third film, Richards had been roped into the franchise and delivered a fun, if unintelligible, cameo in the second sequel. Some wonks thought that’s a fun thing the audience will be attracted by, and dragged him back for the fourth film. So it is that Paul McCartney appears in a cameo so cringy, so toe-curlingly awful, you’d think it was a Ricky Gervais sketch. McCartney, the least talented Beatle, a man who single handedly brought the London Olympics closing ceremony to a crashing halt, brings all of his talents to bear on his cameo – awful screechy scouse accent, gurning fizzog, lousy timing delivering weak jokes – he is so bad he actually makes Depp look good for a moment. It is a performance so irredeemably awful it makes David Beckham’s appearance in King Arthur look Oscar-worthy.

While I bring it up, King Arthur has a much better idea of what constitutes filmic entertainment than this. It is considerably more fun, far funnier, has much better pacing and plot, and for all of its wrongness, it is where I’d recommend you spend your money if you are in the market for a fantasy adventure flick this week.

An end credits sequence hints at yet more Pirates to come. Let’s hope not. This is the foul death rattle from a wheezing corpse of a franchise that should have been declared dead many, many years ago. This is a film so unsure of itself it is called something completely different in the UK to the rest of Europe for no apparent reason. It is a film that seems content to waste huge amounts of money and talent on an overly complex and unfunny script. It is film that seems content with not even attempting to deliver anything close to entertainment to its audience. It is a film where there is, literally, a shark jumping sequence. It is a film where the story revolves around a trident that, when eventually found, has two prongs.

Two prongs does not make a right. Let’s not mince around here, Disney wonks – Please, please, don’t make another one.

Overall Grade: D-

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Hear our podcast review on Episode 223:

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