Pirates 4: On Stranger Tides

I liked Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.  As one critic points out, it isn't absurdist art, but it is entertaining, ridiculous fun, that makes this summer movie something to look forward to.

Having surveyed some reliable critics who didn't like the movie (Roger Ebert, A.O. Scott, Peter Travers), and one new critic to me who really didn't like it (the SF Chronicle's Mick Lasalle), I feel the urge to defend this action movie from the critical onslaught.

First, the movie's plot and sub-plots fit nicely into the two-hour timeframe.  The sub-plots include a doe-eyed love story between a mermaid and a missionary and a tangled relationship that involves betrayals of all kinds between Capt. Jack and his would-be impostor, would-be lover Angelica.  The usurpation of king and crown by pirates of all kinds also enlivens the movie.  The movie attempts to have something for everybody, and it mostly succeeds at that impossible feat.

Second, the movie balances the familiar, Johny Depp's antic pirate, with the new, in bringing in acting performances by Penelope Cruz and Ian McShane that even Mr. Lasalle above credits with almost saving the movie.  McShane plays a steely, bracing evil pirate (Blackbeard) attempting to cheat death, and Penelope Cruz plays Angelica, who owes a debt to Blackbeard and attempts to fulfill it by imposing her will on Capt. Jack.

Finally, the movie has useful humor and maintains the spirit of cavalier freedom that propelled the first movie into the national psyche.  There is some serious criticism that the film deserves for having too many explosions, too many horrible deaths, and too little sympathy shown for characters that are killed nonchalantly.  But that criticism forgets that there is a release in this idea of adventure that many people look for in the movies -- not some drawn out character study of grief and mourning, but rather an escapist reality that does cost lives and does involve some risk to the main characters, but in which the freedom of the main characters to be and do exactly what they want is in the forefront and the real-life consequences of those actions are more muted.

Escapism in the defense of liberty is no vice.  Onward, Captain Jack!  Go see the movie.