I just watched the movie today. First, let me say that it was really really good. It was different from the others though. There were much fewer settings, and it mainly took place in
London, Queen Anne's Revenge, and The Island of the Fountain of Youth. Nonetheless, it was very good. I'm going to give a review similar to that of Del's, just to state my opinion. There may be a few spoilers that I didn't put in spoiler tags... sorry about this. :P
Characters
I overall really liked the diversity of characters. Jack was of course brilliant as always. He actually made a few more jokes than usual in this one that were a bit more clever too, including the part where he was in front of King George, and he called him "Your Highny". Angelica was a good addition, and I feel that she was a bit of a more vicious Elizabeth Swann, if you will. She was one of those people who is kind and loving one minute, and vicious and bloodthirsty the next. As for Blackbeard, not much to be said, but I overall liked his character. He was very greedy, and a perfect example is when
he ended up trying to drink the Fountain water to save himself and take the life of Angelica. Barbossa was interesting this time around... he had the same personality,
except that he is now a privateer for England until the very end of the story, but his appearance is quite different. He looked a bit more red to the face, and of course he was wearing different clothes. Not to mention his peg leg that also seconded as a rum holder. I do agree with Sharktooth that the Catholic Minister's character was a bit unnecessary, but he probably was mainly there for extracting what Blackbeard needed for the Fountain Ritual.
Plot
Most of you know that the objective of the story is to get to the Fountain of Youth, but it is complicated by the fact that there is more than one faction trying to get to it,
Blackbeard and his crew (including Jack), Barbossa who is privateering for England, and the Spanish. Overall, the plot was pretty simple and easy to follow, but not extremely predictable. The one thing that bugged me a bit were the Zombies. They were the crew of Blackbeard (his officers mainly), but I felt that they didn't really have a purpose other than to intimidate.
Humor
This is the icing on the cake for Pirates of the Caribbean, and that is Jack and his humor. From trying to get the cream puff in King George's presence, his "abrupt" goodbye to Angelica, his interaction with the crew on the Queen Anne's Revenge, and him calling Blackbeard "Mr. Beard" at one point, it was a very funny movie. The humor was nice so that you could laugh once or twice instead of needing to just watch intense action all the time.
Ending
This next part contains a lot of spoilers, so the whole part is going to be in spoiler text.
The ending was good, I thought. This movie will probably end up like The Curse of the Black Pearl, as in that it is probably going to be somewhat separated from the next two movies (there will be a five and six), and it is really just setting the scene, with Barbossa captaining the Queen Anne's Revenge and Jack and Gibbs PROBABLY freeing the Black Pearl from the bottle Blackbeard trapped it in. Its hard to say if Angelica will be in the next movie(s), but I have a hunch that she will be. If you saw the scene after the credits, the voodoo doll of Jack washes up on the shores of her island, so she could use that a bit. They can definitely work with the ending they made... although I'm not sure if Barbossa will be coming back. It seemed like he had gone is own path.
Music
I remembered to put this one in before I posted. I know it seems like a small thing, but I'm big on music, so I think its important to put in. I noticed that they reused a lot of the music from the old movies, but there were a few original songs for this movie, such as the theme for Blackbeard and the main theme for On Stranger Tides (titled "On Stranger Tides"... duh...) and the slow, quiet but mysterious theme for the Mermaids. The music in this movie I thought was quite good.
Overall, I'd give this movie a similar rating as Del. It wasn't a perfect movie, but it actually was one of my favorites. It was original and fun. I'd definitely recommend seeing it.