David ApplebyJohnny Depp, best known in recent years for his goofy Pirates of the Caribbean character Jack Sparrow, takes on yet another zany role in Mortdecai.
In the R-rated spy comedy film, he plays Lord Charlie Mortdecai, a British art dealer and aficionado...and a secret agent. An extremely unconventional one. With a curly mustache. Or as he put it, in his Twitter profile, a "robustly mustachioed purveyor of fine art and a lovable [sic] scoundrel with an interest in interesting things."
His mission? To find a stolen painting rumored to contain a code to a secret bank vault filled with Nazi gold. Gwyneth Paltrow plays his wife, Joanna, and Paul Bettany portrays his manservant, Jacques.
The movie also stars Ewan McGregor as an MI5 agent, Inspector Martland, and Olivia Munn as Georgina Krampf, a "well known nymphomaniac." Jeff Goldblum and Paul Whitehouse also make appearances.
Find out what critics said about Mortdechai, which is set for release on Friday, Jan. 23.
1. The Hollywood Reporter's Stephen Dalton calls Mortdecai a "misfiring action-comedy" and says Depp plays the title character "as a human Looney Tunes character."
"Mortdecai is stuffed with star names and classic farce ingredients, but its fatal flaw is an almost surreal lack of jokes," Dalton writes. "The main players spend almost every scene mugging desperately for the camera, milking every possible lowbrow sexual innuendo and clumsy slapstick mishap in novice screenwriter Eric Aronson's thin script. Ironically, these overcooked performances are often more hindrance than help when the occasional funny line arises."
2. Variety's Guy Lodge says the movie is "energetic but obstinately unfunny."
"There's a fatal shortage of zingers to supplement its exhausting zaniness," he writes. "Only particularly dedicated devotees of Johnny Depp's latter-day strain of mugging—here channeling Austin Powers by way of P.G. Wodehouse — will delight in this expensive-looking oddity."
3. The U.K. newspaper The Telegraph's Robbie Collin gives Mortdecai one out of five stars and calls the film "psychotically unfunny."
"It's hard to think of a way in which the experience of watching the new Johnny Depp film could be any worse, unless you returned home afterwards to discover that Depp himself had popped round while you were out and set fire to your house," he says. "This is comfortably the actor's worst film since Alice in Wonderland, and even dedicated fans will find their hearts shriveling up like week-old party balloons at its all-pervading air of clenched desperation."
4. HeyUGuys.com calls Mortdecai a "spectacular mess."
"A lot of the screen time is taken up talking about that thing on Johnny Depp's face, and the best use of it is in seeing Paltrow instantly gag after kissing it," the review states. "It's one of only two successful gags in an otherwise awful film."
"Paltrow and McGregor give all they have in supporting roles, while Paul Bettany has almost nothing to work with," it adds. "This is especially true as he spends most of his screen time opposite Depp, who is "not quite there". We won't even mention the misjudged cameo by an actor who should know much better."
5. Time Out London's Tom Huddleston gives the movie two out of five stars, saying that it "isn't a total disaster."
"Depp may be suffering the most catastrophic career slump since Eddie Murphy said yes to Norbit, but he's still perfectly watchable," he writes. "The script, meanwhile, offers up a small handful of decent gags, and there are just enough pratfalls and wacky cameos (Paul Whitehouse! Jeff Goldblum!) to drag us through the boring bits."
"But as the plot ties itself in ever more uninteresting knots, a nagging question remains: who is Mortdecai for?" he adds. "It's not thrilling enough for the multiplex crowd and not funny enough to work as out-and-out comedy. The aristocratic in-jokes are sure to alienate US audiences, while Brits will be put off by the sheer relentless fakery of it all."