Sunken leisure

In the fifth Pirates of the Caribbean movie, a bunch of pirates run around and act like dicks while being pursued by ghosts and trying not to sink or get impaled by ghost swords.

If my memory serves me right, that is basically the plot of all the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. The new one, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales rehashes the same plot, with Johnny “The Whore” Depp doing his whole drunken Keith Richards pirate routine again as Jack Sparrow.

Actually, his Keith Richards routine has devolved into something more akin to Dudley Moore in Arthur 2: On the Rocks. I reference the Arthur sequel, for the original was somewhat funny, but the gag got real tired in part two.

So it goes with Depp’s meandering, mumbling, tipsy performance as Jack Sparrow, the feared pirate that everybody in the world seems to have some sort of beef with, be them alive or dead. He’s laboring with a joke that stopped being funny four movies ago.

This time out, a new legion of undead sailors is after Jack due to his having a compass that can lead them back to the land of the living, or some bullshit like that. The band of dead sailors is led by Captain Salazar (Javier Bardem), some dude who was trying to rid the world of pirates in his living days, but wound up a cursed ghost under the sea due to a young Sparrow’s clever trick.

Young Sparrow is depicted in a flashback that has Depp being the latest star to be de-aged by CGI. This movie trick is proving to be some hardcore, creepy-looking stuff. I liked it when they did it to Kurt Russell in the Guardians of the Galaxy sequel, but this time out, it just looks weird.

Yes, Bardem’s Salazar looks kind of cool in this film. He’s sort of half blown-up, and he always looks like his hair is flowing in water, even when he’s above ground. There, I said something relatively positive about this crap.

There’s also some nonsense involving Henry Turner (Brenton Thwaites) trying to un-curse his dead father, Will (Orlando Bloom), yet another undead pirate. He must also do something with the compass that Sparrow possesses to bring Will back. If he succeeds, that means Orlando Bloom will be back in full swing for more Pirates of the Caribbean movies, which had me rooting for the compass to be stepped on by a really big person and then burned in a “Please, No More Orlando Bloom Movies!” bonfire.

If that plot doesn’t give you enough for a steady vibe of déj&#;agrave; vu, Geoffrey Rush is back as Barbosa, the monkey-toting dude who was dead in the first movie but is now resurrected. Like Depp, Rush’s pirate routine got tired after the first movie.

The best part of the film actually belongs to Paul McCartney, who cameos as Uncle Jack, Jack Sparrow’s imprisoned relative. McCartney delivers a few good lines with the sort of deft comic timing he displayed over 50 years ago in A Hard Day’s Night and Help! It’s too bad this wasn’t his movie, because he’s far more interesting than Depp’s played-out, gimmicky bits.

Also, kudos to having him singing the Beatles’ version of “Maggie Mae” in his jail cell. Nice touch. There, I’ve said two good things about this piece of crap.

Stay for the credits, because there’s an after-credits scene that sets up further adventures, even though Disney keeps saying each Pirates film is the last one. Actually, don’t stay for the credits, and just get your ass out of the theater as soon as you start seeing “Key Grips” and “Produced By.” Actually, just stay home and don’t watch this insulting cash machine at all. It’s a waste of time.