This film, the fourth in a series that made its improbable and profitable leap from the theme park to the multiplex eight summers ago, represents an attempt to rejuvenate a flagging franchise. In Hollywood, gratuitous excess not necessity is the mother of invention.
It's fitting that this fourth instalment of the mega booty-hauling franchise revolves around a quest for the fountain of youth. Everyone's racing to get to the fountain of youth, negotiating perilous terrain and fantastical episodes and stitching each other up. The freshest new monsters are some vicious but seductive mermaids, which are rather cruelly hunted, slaughtered and tortured along the way.
Worse still, everyone else is so scheming and self-centred and double-crossing, it's not always clear who to root for, who's in cahoots with whom, or what anyone's going to do if/when they actually find the sacred fountain. The temptation to do something fresh is often outweighed by the fear of losing whatever it was that made it successful in the first place. This tries to do both, but ends up just trying too hard.
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