Fifth 'Pirates of the Caribbean' takes fans on disappointing journey

In Walt Disney's fifth installment of the lucrative "Pirates of the Caribbean" action-comedy franchise, dead men tell no tales worth telling.

Everything about "Dead Men Tell No Tales," an unwieldy and (inadvertently) lifeless sequel, reeks of the kind of compromises you'd expect in a movie directed and produced by a Hollywood studio committee.

It's exactly the sort of shallow, crass, commercialized venture that film critics feared when they heard about Disney's plans to make a 2003 movie based on an amusement-park ride, not exactly character-rich, thematically intricate source material.

Then, surprise!

Gore Verbinski directed "The Curse of the Black Pearl" as an old-fashioned, shiver-me-timbers comic adventure ripe with ghosts, curses and the good kind of pirates who don't steal digital movies for ransom.

Then, Johnny Depp's bold, risky choice to base his foppish, always-inebriated Captain Jack Sparrow on Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards created gotta-see buzz.

Four features and 14 years later, Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg's "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales" is stuck on the poop deck, with Depp's once cutting-edge performance in desperate need of a sharpening stone.

Henry Turner (Brenton Thwaites) - son of Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) for those just joining the "Pirates" experience - wants to free his poor dad, stuck at the bottom of the sea because of a terrible curse.

But if Henry can find the mythical trident of Poseidon (or Neptune if you're Roman), he can wield it to break not just his dad's curse, but all curses everywhere for all-time.

This is less an actual plot than a narrative catalyst for a nonstop series of loopy action sequences and dodgy visual effects ranging from a breathless, Oscar-caliber parting-of-the-sea scene to chintzy CGI characters resembling escapees from a Don Bluth "Dragon's Lair" video game.

Henry keeps crossing paths with Carina Smyth (Kaya Scodelario), a smart, fiercely feminist astronomer and impressive athlete who stays ahead of the various mobs accusing her of being a witch.

Meanwhile, Henry's search for the trident becomes complicated by some undead Spanish sailors led by Captain Armando Salazar (Javier Bardem), missing a large chunk of his head, garnished by strands of hair perpetually floating in the air as if under water.

The timely arrival of the adversarial Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) spells trouble for Captain Jack, who appears to be the protagonist in Jeff Nathanson's and Terry Rossio's cluttered screenplay, but who could be cut out completely and not alter the basic plot.

A radiant Iranian actress named Golshifteh Farahani joyfully relishes playing an actual witch, bald and tattooed as if on loan from the set of "Game of Thrones."

(Psst! Be on the lookout for former Beatle Paul McCartney under a gob of makeup as Uncle Jack, a vapid imprisoned pirate.)

"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales" isn't a terrible sequel, just a disappointing one in its mild amusements and desperate overuse of Klaus Badelt's catchy, pirates musical theme.

Besides, what's not to like about ghost sharks?

“Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales”

★ ★

Starring: Johnny Depp, Javier Bardem, Brenton Thwaites, Geoffrey Rush, Kaya Scodelario

Directed by: Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg

Other: A Walt Disney Pictures release. Rated PG-13 for suggestive situations, violence. 135 minutes