MOVIE REVIEW - Mortdecai

Is the shine finally coming off the Johnny Depp weird character bandwagon?   It would seem so after the new Mortdecai this weekend.

Depp has made a great living out of playing strange, and way-out-there characters over a number of years. And many of them memorable, fun and some really, really well done. This is not among them. And it could be that we've just seen him do this stuff a few too may times.  To some, this is a cheap Peter Sellers imitation of this signature Inspector Clouseau character of the 1960's and 70's, and they would be right.  Just not anywhere near as original.

Mortdecai is a comedy about a quirky art dealer/detective named Charlie Mortdecai (Depp).   He is from London, and after swindling countless people is bad art deals, he is commissioned at virtually no pay by the British Government to recover a priceless painting that had been stolen.  It is somewhere out there on the world black market, and he has to track it down, or face the consequences of an 8 million dollar tax debt.  This takes way too may tosses and turns to explain effectively here. But in short, this overall story is a mess.

This has a seemingly great cast, with Gwenyth Paltrow as his wife, and Ewan Mcgregor as the British agent who makes him take the case.  The supporting cast is fine, and all seems to be in order, except for one thing.  This is just not written very well.  This is intended as a British parody of sorts, and strives for the charm of a quirky independent flick.  Everyone doing their best British accents, and mannerisms, but in the end this is just not very funny.

There are though some really funny physical comedy sight gags that did have the theater laughing from time to time. Problem is, you have to wade through endless dialogue that at times is so tedious you are looking at your watch to see how far we have yet to go.  Depp is stretching here and he just can't pull this off effectively.  A few moments of real fun, draped in between long stretches of nothing, is simply not a great night at the movies.

Mortdecai.  There's a reason that a Johnny Depp movie has been buried this deep in the middle of mid January movie purgatory.