Mortdecai (2015) Review

Time: 107 Minutes
Age Rating: Violence, Sexual References and Offensive Language
Cast:
Johnny Depp as Charlie Mortdecai
Ewan McGregor as Inspector Alistair Martland
Gwyneth Paltrow as Johanna Mortdecai
Paul Bettany as Jock Strapp
Jonny Pasvolsky as Emil Strago
Olivia Munn as Georgina Krampf
Jeff Goldblum as Milton Krampf
Director: David Koepp

Juggling some angry Russians, the British Mi5, his impossibly leggy wife (Gwyneth Paltrow) and an international terrorist, debonair art dealer and part time rogue Charlie Mortdecai (Johnny Depp) must traverse the globe armed only with his good looks and special charm in a race to recover a stolen painting rumoured to contain the code to a lost bank account filled with Nazi gold.

Mortdecai stars Johnny Depp as an eccentric character that looks nothing like Johnny Depp. Sound familiar? That’s because that’s what he’s been doing for the past decade, and as you probably predicted, this film is another failure and another nail into the coffin of Johnny Depp’s career. Mortdecai tries to be a funny and witty crime comedy but fails at it big time. This film does have a few funny moments and it is well directed but for the most part it fails as a comedy, it fails as a mystery and it overall fails as a movie.

The plot is a bit of a mystery and the problem is that it is so hard to follow. By the time I got to the halfway point, I honestly stopped caring about what was going on. After seeing the movie I honestly have a hard time remembering a lot of this movie, it was so forgettable. Also despite this movie being a comedy, it’s not very funny. The movie has many running jokes and most of them aren’t funny in the slightest (the most prominent one being about Mortdecai’s moustache for some reason). This movie does have a few funny moments, but the problem is that for one, there aren’t many of them and two, it reuses the jokes over and over again and aren’t funny the second time around. It fails to be smart, it fails to be funny and it fails to be riveting in the slightest. This movie pretty much fails at everything it sets out to do, except with a few good jokes.

Johnny Depp was pretty much playing the British Jack Sparrow, only less likable and less funny. I think it’s a mixture between the acting and the character but at a point I actually started to feel annoyed at Mortdecai, there’s nothing likable about him, he’s not funny, he’s not smart, his voice was annoying and it’s we’ve seen this from Depp before so many times. Other stars like Ewan McGregor and Gwyenth Paltrow are wasted in this movie, but they are overall fine in their roles. Paul Bettany was probably the best part of the movie, he has the best lines and the funniest moments.

This movie is well directed, I can give the movie that. It does look good but unfortunately the movie isn’t really focussed on visuals, more on the writing and ‘comedy’ and since the movie fails at both it almost feels irrelevant to mention. No one going into Mortdecai is going to remember the look of the movie, I’m just trying to find as many positive things as possible, there is so few of them.

This movie is another low point in Johnny Depp’s career. While the film is directed well and there are some funny moments, for the most part it is an unfunny, uninteresting mess. I heard that Black Mass is Johnny Depp’s comeback, I want to see it and I hope it’s good because Johnny Depp has been playing slight variations of the same character for years. However Johnny Depp isn’t the main issue with Mortdecai, even without him the movie is still very flawed. It’s not like Jupiter Ascending where there are some enjoyably bad moments, Mortdecai is just boring and worst of all forgettable and I really don’t recommend that you watch it. It will be 110 Minutes of your life that you’ll never get back.

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