Jeff Nathanson

Easily the weakest film in the franchise (which in my opinion has one truly great film, the first, two very solidly good ones, 3 and 4, and, in 2, one more along the lines of this fifth one, i.e. decent-but-forgettable), but considering that it gets a surprising amount of things right. Spoilers follow.
The mythology is filled out cleverly (the compass finally gets (some degree of) backstory and this drives the new story), it makes excellent use of virtually all the preceeding entries, and the two new protagonists are just the right mixture of originally drawn yet nostalgically reminiscent of the dynamics of Will and Elizabeth. The humour works well, and the arc of the franchise's best character (Barbossa, obviously) is furthered and even ended effectively and emotionally.
What does not work, unfortunately, is Jack Sparrow, and on this one flaw, the whole movie repeatedly stumbles. The decision to make him a broken-down drunkard to give him an arc to move from is good, but we never see him actually move from it. He remains a mostly useless spectator to the adventures of others throughout the film, only having a semblance of an arc in the sense of ending up in a final scene where he's clearly found some direction in life again. Completely gone is the "mad as a fox" genious that made him so memorable in the first four films -- in this one, he survives repeatedly on pure luck, but never the kind of luck that makes you scratch your head and go "did he PLAN that?!" the way it always was before. The character, which for all their flaws was always the most compelling source of entertainment in the first four films, is here reduced to a gimmick. Which would have worked well for his arc had the final act of the film showed him return to his former self, but it did not. The only glimpse of Sparrow's old genious is in the flashback to his youth, but we never see it in the present day version.
To a lesser extent, this complaint also extends to Barbossa. He does get an arc, as mentioned, and a good one, but his final scene aside, he never truly gets to shine on the way through it. He never does anything particularly clever, particularly memorable, particularly creepy or particularly emotional (not through the fault of Rush, who is every bit as brilliant as ever in the part). I totally understand it's hard to come up with a wonderful or cool character moment for everyone, but these two frenemies at the core of the film both desperately needed one (meaning aside from Barbossa's death, which worked well for me).
Ah, well. It is still a good romp that looks gorgeous, is using the same amazing themes in the score, is frequently funny and rather exciting. Hopefully, the franchise will continue (and pay off the creepily awesome post-credits stinger when it does), because as low points go, this really wasn't all that low at all.… (more)