5th ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ watches like a Disneyland ride

Almost everything worth anything in the fifth “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie is geared toward spectacle.

You want to see ghost sharks? We have great whites and hammerheads, rotted away but still capable of taking a bite out of Captain Jack Sparrow’s dinghy. Want to see Sparrow escape from a guillotine? We have a rescue that sends our drunken hero somersaulting while still strapped into the contraption, the blade sliding up and down toward his neck as it tumbles head over heels. You want to see an entire building dragged through the streets of a St. Martin town while Sparrow rides the structure? It’s here.

This movie doesn’t have much in the way of plot or character, but maybe this franchise has simply returned to its origins as a Disneyland ride: disconnected sensations, strung together at regular intervals.

“Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales” is a very expensive gamble on the continued life of this series, which seemed exhausted with the ho-hum “On Stranger Tides” in 2011.

We still have Johnny Depp at the helm, returning to his dreadlocked role as Captain Jack and looking like he’s been aged in a rum cask for the intervening years. Depp’s joyful first fling at the part (way back in 2003) was a glittering example of how a wickedly creative actor can take over an under-conceived movie and make movie magic.

Each sequel has diminished a little more of that joy. If you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve seen all of Depp’s funny lines in “Dead Men Tell No Tales,” except they’re funnier in the trailer because the timing is better.

A few strands of story are alive from previous installments, but otherwise we get two new young lovers: Henry (Brendan Thwaites), whose occupation appears to be professional dullard, and Carina (Kaya Scodelario), an amateur scientist and vivid embodiment of Disney’s mission to provide Girls Rule role models. Both are in search of Poseidon’s mythical trident, which has, like, major powers.

Scodelario, who starred in Andrea Arnold’s eccentric 2011 version of “Wuthering Heights,” is by far the liveliest actor in the movie; she’s more masculine than Henry, and very nearly as feminine as Captain Jack.

Geoffrey Rush returns as peg-legged Captain Barbossa, and Javier Bardem joins the franchise as a ghost captain vowing revenge on Sparrow because of a decades-old defeat (a sequence depicted here with an eerily “21 Jump Street”-vintage Depp, digitally youthanized).

The plot is a tired rehash. Still, there is something to be said for big, buoyant spectacle in a summer movie. (I mentioned the ghost sharks, right?)

Directors Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg previously did “Kon-Tiki,” so I guess they were hired because they had already dealt with a large body of water. They do have a feel for bigger-than-life action scenes, and the absurdity of the guillotine-escape sequence has a little of the jumpy humor of Richard Lester’s “Three Musketeers” movies. Another showdown has the ocean parting and the characters running around on the sea floor, an eye-filling piece of loopiness.

I also enjoyed the brief scene with Paul McCartney in pirate garb, in part because McCartney vocalizes a deep cut from a Beatles album (I won’t spoil it), and in part because his dialogue bears a touch of Monty Python — I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that Eric Idle wrote this exchange.

These isolated bursts of imagination don’t turn “Dead Men Tell No Tales” into a good movie, and when everything is gigantic it leaves little room for charm. But at least the forward motion of this theme-park ride is swifter than previous installments (it goes 129 minutes as opposed to Part Three’s waterlogged 169).

Hollywood is, we are told, currently nervous about the under-performance of once-reliable properties, as it seems an entire generation of repetitive formulas may have wearied the audience. The box-office performance of this “Pirates” chapter will tell a lot about that: Is there life left in these once-dependable franchises, or do we have a bunch of ghost sharks still swimming along blindly?

“Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales” (2 stars)

The fifth installment of the Disney franchise is nothing but spectacle, although some of the spectacle is really pretty fun. Johnny Depp returns as Captain Jack Sparrow, battling a ghost captain (Javier Bardem) and countless mythical characters. There’s no plot, just a string of theme-park attractions.

Rating: PG-13, for violence

Showing: Alderwood Mall, Cinebarre Mountlake Terrace, Galaxy Monroe, Marysville, Stanwood Cinemas, Meridian, Thornton Place Stadium, Woodinville, Cascade Mall, Oak Harbor Plaza