Mortdecai [M]

Meet Lord Charles Mortdecai, a handsome art expert and dealer with a rather questionable moustache. Whilst life has been luminous and luxurious for Charlie, he has reached the end of his tether being over 8 million pounds in debt and no longer attractive to his wife (it’s the moustache). But as luck would have it, there is a glimmer of hope for Lord Mortdecai when a mysterious murder occurs and a next to priceless painting goes missing. Armed with his shady connections and his ever-loyal manservant Jock, the race is on for Charlie to find the missing painting before his rival dealers do, and also before the auction to sell his family heirlooms. 

The real critics have absolutely panned this flick, and I will be honest that I wasn’t expecting all that much from it in terms of, well, anything. It’s Johnny Depp and Ewan McGregor, believe me I wanted to love this movie. As it transpires, I have to admit it was not as bad as I was expecting it to be. By no means anything admirable or indeed noteworthy in cinematic history, Mortdecai struck me as a film that that didn’t quite have a handle on what it was trying to achieve. It was almost as though someone had read the book on which it’s based and thought, wouldn’t this be a bit of fun? This very well could have been just a pet project for fun on the part of Mister Depp; a bit of a nothing-serious-let’s-play-around type film. 

Meet Lord Charles Mortdecai, a handsome art expert and dealer with a rather questionable moustache. Whilst life has been luminous and luxurious for Charlie, he has reached the end of his tether being over 8 million pounds in debt and no longer attractive to his wife (it’s the moustache). But as luck would have it, there is a glimmer of hope for Lord Mortdecai when a mysterious murder occurs and a next to priceless painting goes missing. Armed with his shady connections and his ever-loyal manservant Jock, the race is on for Charlie to find the missing painting before his rival dealers do, and also before the auction to sell his family heirlooms. 

I said before that this movie might very well have been a little project for fun, not to be taken seriously. I say this with sincerity because the film really does feel like that. I didn’t feel any sincerity or seriousness from any of the cast members: Depp was just having fun being a cross between the Mad Hatter and Johnny English, Paltrow was almost yawning as she said each line, and McGregor just sort of meandered through the entire thing, going through the motions of an almost Jude-Law-Watson type detective with nice hair. 

The main fault of this movie, though, does not lie within the performances, but in the writing. Whilst there were some very good and entertaining bouts of wit and sharp one-liners that drew audible laughter from my lips, ultimately the screenplay was uninspiring and rather predictable right down to composition and the mise-en-scene. The performances themselves were not that bad, to give credit where credit is due. 

Depp flexes his comedic actor muscle with a nice rhythm and his timing is always spot-on. Simultaneously, he seems to take a bit of the piss out of the dapper English gentleman, made all the more entertaining as we remind ourselves that he’s American and most of the film is shot as an American blockbuster. One might be bold enough to conjecture that there is some underlying ingenious irony, but it’s a tall thought to put out in the universe. 

Starring Johnny Depp, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ewan McGregor, Paul Bettany, Olivia Munn, Jonny Pasvolsky, Michael Culkin, Ulrich Thomsen, Paul Whitehouse, Guy Burnet, and Jeff Goldblum, Mortdecai is a mindless-brain-candy, just-for-fun type movie filled with action, mystery, intrigue, and comedy. It truly was not as bad as I was expecting it to be: it made me giggle on more than one occasion, quite openly I might add. It’s not a great movie, this much is true, but there’s a fun spark in it, if only just a spark.