Easy answer:.......the all consuming greed of Disney executives and producer Jerry Bruckheimer.........as loud as the sound effects in this movie might be, the sound of Disney execs feverishly working their calculators on box office projections would probably drown them out.....
An enormous turn of the karma wheel comes into play here. Johnny Depp struck terror and dismay in the guts of Disney honchos when they got their first look at his Captain Jack Sparrow. Here in the midst of their mega-million budgeted theme park movie strode this tottering, mumbling, disheveled creature, carrying on like a drunken, heavily drugged, mascara'd ex rock star.........
And as proof of screenwriter William Goldman's timeless piece of wisdom about Hollywood ("Nobody knows anything").....it worked. Audiences adored Captain Jack and took him to their hearts......
Not just audiences. Wacky and strange as he was, the Disney corporate machine, knowing a cash cow when it saw one, absorbed Jack Sparrow into its collection of characters. Like Belle, Snow White, Woody and Buzz Lightyear, Depp's creation became just another marketing tool.....a flesh and blood action figure to push merchandise.....and more sequels.
No one knows this better than Depp, who strolls through the 5th 'Pirates Of The Caribbean' movie like a life-sized walking, talking doll freshly purchased from the Disney Store at the mall. Pull the string on his back and he pops his eyes, slurs out some drunken one-liners, then holds out his hand for a huge Disney paycheck......
Therein lies the wheel-turning irony we mentioned.......Depp may have started out shaking the House Of Mouse with his 'I-don't-give-a-shit' Captain Jack, but over the course of five movies, Disney turned the tables on him.......transforming Depp and and his character into just another worn out toy on the corporate shelves.........the kind everyone's tired of playing with.
Including Depp, from the looks of this movie. We imagine Disney hired a staff whose job it was to keep him awake....
We don't have the strength or the stamina to even begin describing the plot, which involves no less than four separate groups of people pursuing a lost treasure. We could have used a pair of ESPN commentators with a diagram chart to keep it straight for us.......if we at all cared.
A few odd things we liked: Grade A Prime Hams Geoffrey Rush and Javier Bardem as competing pirates. A scene involving a shameless collection of awful double-entendres when the female lead announces she's a Horologist.....the resulting banter sounds like something you'd hear in "Carry On Pirates"...... And early on, a marvelously inventive Buster Keaton-worthy physical gag with Depp trapped in a whirling, runaway guillotine. But no, we're not going to tell you it's worth seeing the movie for........more like, wait till it shows up on basic cable on a rainy Sunday afternoon.......and stick around only for the first half hour......
Our advice.......if you must see it because you're a "Pirates Of The Caribbean" completist......catch it in some venue that doesn't involve you spending money for it.......please, please, don't give Jerry Bruckheimer and Disney one more doubloon for this stuff.......it'll only encourage them. 1 & 1/2 star (*1/2) No treasure worth discovering here at all......
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