Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

It was good. I liked it.
It's also the first of the Pirates movies that I left the theater not feeling enthusiastic about at all, so I guess it's the worst of the four. Parts of it were good; overall it was a lot of fun, if a bit disjointed. It doesn't fit together as well as the first three did.
Barbossa was awesome (but not in it nearly enough; same goes for Gibbs) and Jack Sparrow was his usual fun, twitchy self. There was no Will Turner angsting around and getting on my nerves and it was really nice that the three characters I really cared about seeing were the three that came back for this movie.
As for newcomers there's Blackbeard, who's a darn fine villain, a crew member named Scrum who is rather endearing and adorable and, of course, the two factors that damn near ruined the movie for me (both of which I knew about beforehand and should have been more prepared):
1) the half-assed romance subplot between a missionary named Philip and a mermaid who he claims is named Serena even though she never tells him that's what her name is. I guess I didn't officially know about this one, but I did see a poster for the movie of a mermaid clinging to some bland looking man that, honestly, if it hadn't said "Pirates Of The Caribbean" on it, I would have thought was a poster for a particularly corny romance novel. I guess the filmmakers decided since Will and Elizabeth weren't in this one we had to have a dull romantic subplot from someone. 'Cause, you know, audiences go to pirate movies for the romance and not, oh, I don't know, to see some fucking pirates! (Eyeroll.) Oh well. At least this was practically a nonentity in the movie. My next complaint however...
2) Penelope Cruz. Not her character, Angelica, but Penelope Cruz is the biggest problem with this movie. 'Cause if a different actress had played her, I might not have hated her. But I have a serious problem with Penelope Cruz. Sure, she's very pretty and maybe in Spanish language movies she might even be a good actress (in fact, the two times in the movie she's yelling at Jack in Spanish are the two times she doesn't annoy me). But I've never seen her in a Spanish language movie. I've only seen her in English language movies and in those she's sailing by on looks alone and it's not enough. In every movie I've seen her in her performances are flat and the only emotions she ever manages to convey are "I'm sexy" and "I think I'm acting." So, yes, she made a very good looking (if a bit too clean) pirate, but she didn't make an effective or believeable one.
Considering the first three movies have strong female characters (Anamaria, Elizabeth and Tia Dalma) but also got talented actresses to back up the characters (Zoe Saldana, Keira Knightley and Naomie Harris) and make them likeable and believeable, it's disappointing that they'd drop the ball so completely in casting Angelica.
Overall, if you ignore her (or, at least, if I ignore her), it was a good movie. It was fun, if a bit more serious than its prececessors. It had long stretches of not-so-interesting bits. And it needed a whole lot more Barbossa and Gibbs, and infinitely less of Penelope Cruz. I'd even let the stupid mermaid romance slide if they'd recast Angelica.
Oh, I would like to say, though, that it was awesome that they decided to go with evil, violent mermaids. Evil, violent mermaids are so much cooler than how most of modern pop culture interprets mermaids.
So, in spite of the fact that the first three Pirates movies have Will Turner, I did like them better than the fourth one. Which is kinda sad; I was thrilled at the prospect of a Will-less movie.
Much like how I felt about the second one, though, I'll probably like this one better if I see it again. There are some ass kicking action scenes and now that I know what to expect overall, I can just kick back and enjoy it next time around.
I hope.

End of line.
-Sally