I've a few updates to make over the next few days, I've watched a fair few more films and haven't written about them yet. In this post I'll just give my thoughts on two films I saw in the cinema in the past week: Pirates of the Caribbean : On Stranger Tides and The Hangover Part Two.
Pirates of the Caribbean : On Stranger Tides
The 4th in the series of Pirates of the Caribbean films, On Stranger Tides' focus is Captain Jack Sparrow's quest to reach the fountain of youth, which is also the object of three other parties' desire. The Spanish, the British (whose expedition is captained by Geoffrey Rush's Captain Barbossa character) and Blackbeard (played by Ian McShane).
I'll admit that I had higher hopes for this film than I did the past two sequels, as this film promised to be, like the first, a self-contained story that will be resolved by the films end rather than the 5 hour mash of storylines and subplots PotC 2 and 3 were, which were a load of old bollocks.
Sadly, while this film is better than the other sequels, it still falls well short of the first Pirates of the Caribbean film, which remains the only good film in the franchise. The problem I found with this film is that I simply did not find it at all engaging. I quickly grew tired of drawn out action sequences involving Jack Sparrow escaping from numerous perils, and some of the choices made my characters in the film made absolutely no sense. For example, in the first scene on Blackbeard's ship it's quickly established that his crew are barely more than slaves, and detest working under him, and yet later in the film they are quite willing to put their lives at stake fighting for him. The mermaid subplot made absolutely no sense either, and once again there were invulnerable henchmen, and silly magical powers.
Really it's not worth seeing this film, I never will again.
4/10 (for the purposes of comparison, I would rate the first PotC as 7/10, and the others as 3/10)
The Hangover Part Two
If you're wondering what the plot of the Hangover Part Two is, just think of the first one but change "fucked up in Las Vegas" to "fucked up in Bangkok". It is exactly the same, save for a change in location, a change in who is getting married, and a change in who they manage to lose. So it's Stuart (Ed Helms, the bespectacled dentist) who's getting married this time, and ends up getting accidently fucked up with Phil (Bradley Cooper) and Alan (weird beardy man Zach Galifianakis), and losing his bride-to-be's younger brother Teddy.
The film is watchable, but fairly boring and predictable, especially if you've seen the first. The ending was fairly bollocks as well, at least the part about Stuart's father-in-law-to-be deciding he doesn't hate him anymore, which, given the past 48 hours in the film, would see any doctor declaring him legally insane.
All in all, it's exactly the same as the first film, just in a different place and not as funny.
5/10 (first film would be 7/10)
There are a few other films I've watched as part of the 30 Day Film Challenge that I haven't gotten around to writing about yet, these are:
3. Das Leben der Anderen (the Lives of Others) (2006)
4. To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
5. The Searchers (1956)
