Film Review: Pirates 4

Call me cray-cray, but I was never a huge fan of the Pirates of the Caribbean series. Yes, I thought the first movie was pretty awesome, but the series pretty much lost me with the second and third movies. If C hadn't wanted to watch the fourth movie this afternoon, I don't think I would have bothered. Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow is brilliant and all, but once you've already seen him in three movies, there isn't much new to report on. I'll grant that I was assez curieuse about how Penelope Cruz would fare as a replacement for Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom, but I wasn't exactly eager to shell out $10.50 for a movie ticket.

But now that I have watched the movie, I can tell you exactly what is the best part about the latest installment of Pirates of the Caribbean...

MERMAIDS.

It's been merely three hours since I watched the movie, and honestly, the only part that is still stuck to me the way a song gets stuck in your head is the mermaids. More specifically, the romance between Phillip Swift, the clergyman, and Syrena, the mermaid -- though I have to say, the major scene with the mermaids was pretty cool.

Awww, aren't they cute?

Since the movie came out just days ago, I suppose it would be improper of me to give away any spoilers. I'll just say this -- after Gov. J, C, and I walked out of the movie theater, literally all we kept talking about were Syrena and Phillip. The way the film ends their storyline is slightly ambiguous (happy or tragic? bittersweet?), except after C and I did some major web-surfing in an attempt to decipher what happened, the consensus among the three of us was that it was a happy ending.

What's sad is that the ambiguity probably stems from the fact that the three of us only understood about 75 percent of the "pirate talk," and thus, none of us heard a key piece of information spoken during the mermaid battle scene that would have cleared up the ambiguity. (Subtitles, anyone?? "Pirate" is a language setting on Facebook, after all...) Though if you google "What happened to Syrena and Phillip?", you'll find that many other people had this same problem.

The other major question the three of us had after the film...

Picture this scene: The glass coffin filled with water slips out of grasp and breaks on the jungle ground, causing the mermaid to tumble out along with the water. As she catches for breath, you realize that her mermaid tail is gone, replaced by legs, and that she is stark naked and shivering. The clergyman, seeing her discomfort, strips off his shirt and wraps it around her to keep her warm...

The rest of us: HOLY POMELO, HOW DID A CLERGYMAN GET SO JACKED??