PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES (M, 129 MINS), DIRECTED BY JOACHIM RONNIN, ESPEN SANDBERG,

Back in 2003,

seemed like an idea whose time had come. It was an outrageously entertaining and likeable film and the first in years that had thrown the laws of common sense and physics quite so joyously to the four winds in pursuit of spectacle and a decent laugh.

was exactly what a film based on a Disneyland ride had to be; fun, dumb and seemingly over too soon. Director Gore Verbinski made two more instalments, with the last film in the natural trilogy – – being an absolute ripper.

And with that, the series really should have been over. But in 2011, the truly lousy

romped out of the box office with a billion dollars, and with that, this fifth film became an inevitability.

coming in at a mere 129 minutes, is the shortest of the five films, but it feels like a very long slog from titles to credits.

The film finds Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow inexplicably marooned and down on his luck. He’s shipless and rudderless much of the time, meandering through an interminable opening that doesn’t really achieve much but a nod to Terry Gilliam and to introduce us to Brenton Thwaites and Kaya Scodelario as the young couple who will try, lucklessly, to recreate Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom’s chemistry from the earlier films. Thwaites is actually playing Bloom’s adult son, which either passes for mythbuilding, or just serves to remind us how long now this series has been running.

At some point, Javier Bardem pops in, with an accent like a second-rate ventriloquist trying to gargle mince while impersonating Manuel from

as this instalment’s pirate enemy. Bardem, one of the most electrifying actors on the planet on a good day, never really manages to out-perform his own makeup here.