Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides follows the nation's favourite fancy dress costume, Jack Sparrow, on a convoluted journey to find the fountain of youth.

I would try and summarise the story for you but I don't have a clue what happened around 2/3 of the way through. There's so much cutting between locations and changing allegiances, and especially because the film basically follows 4 different groups at the same time, that I genuinely got lost at some points, but it's basically what you would expect; A quest to get to the fountain of youth before someone else, and being all piratey on the way.

If you asked me for one word that best describes the film, it would be "Unnecessary". Every little incident in the film that can be exploited and turned into some big fight or chase scene, is, and the result is that the film trudges along at such a slow pace that it feels incredibly long. The fights also get extremely predictable because they're so often and so similar. "Oh look, they've jumped on the barrels to have a fight. Now they're on the narrow wooden beams. Now they're swinging from ropes. Now they're climbing the rigging." Who the fuck taught these people how to fight?? Do they think swords work better the higher up you are?

The dialogue in the film is really bad at times, with people spooling off large chunks of story for no other reason than the audience's benefit. This is a point addressed by Jack Sparrow towards the end. He's strolling along, talking to himself and "coincidentally" moving the plot forward as he does so, and then he stops and looks around, "Oh, there's no one there." Yes Jack, we know. And just because you've shown that you know you're taking the piss with this monologue, doesn't mean it's ok. That's like kicking someone in the balls and then going "I bet that hurts."

There's a smaller plot thread in the film which involves a young cleric lad who's never established, falling in love with a mermaid that the pirates have captured. This plot was truly pathetic. It wasn't needed; didn't add anything; and didn't even finish. I'm going to take a stab in the dark and say that the studios demanded a lovey-dovey storyline at the 11th hour. And what they got was rushed bestiality. Maybe the police were coming?

To put things in context, I physically couldn't make it all the way through the second PotC film, so this has the leg up on that straight away. It's not a bad film, but it's not that great either. It's typical of a film that's had a lot of money chucked at it but there wasn't really a good idea to flesh out. You definitely don't miss the two big names that dropped out of the series (Bloom and Knightley). The only problems I found were that it moves too slowly and gets confusing at times. Apart from that, it's a good, old-fashioned, Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade knock-off.