As I suspected, I liked it a lot more than most critics did, and so did my son. In fact, we both enjoyed it, with a couple of reservations.
Given that (as my son said) it has the same DNA as the Pirates films, if you liked all of them well enough, you should almost certainly like this too. For my money Gore Verbinski does physical, large scale comedy very well; and Depp is the man for eccentric comedy characters.
Sure it's not perfect: it's at its best for the first half (in fact, it's really great, which means it's impressive for quite a long time, given its total length), but it does take too long in the second half to establish what is going on before the climatic action sequence. (Unfortunately, this train chase too often looks a little bit too reliant on CGI, if you ask me - but I liked the way it ends with poetic justice).
The Tonto-centric story contains a couple of jokes which are genuinely surprising and absolutely hilarious for it - almost worth the admission alone, as they say. And it is a film which, like the Pirates movies, is so full of incident that it could be rewatched on DVD with some pleasure. My son wanted to watch it again the next day, so that's a sign of its quality, if you are 14.
One credit I noted at the end said that the odd Tonto makeup was inspired by a painting. An article showing it, which was only painted in 2006, and an interview with the artist, is here. (Yes, there is a magazine called "Cowboys and Indians".) It's not meant to be historically based on anyone, so it was a brave decision to use it throughout the movie.
No matter, it's a largely enjoyable movie which deserved to do better.
And if you get the DVD, make sure you watch the short blooper scenes in the bonus features. It gives an insight into how certain stunts were done.
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