Thursday, January 29, 2015

Movie Review: "Mortdecai" (2015)

Movie"Mortdecai"
Ticket Price: $12.50
Director: David Koepp
Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour, 46 minutes
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Lord Charlie Mortdecai (Johnny Depp) is an art dealer on the verge of bankruptcy. When a Goya painting is stolen while being cleaned, MI-5 enlists the help of Mortdecai to find it due to his connections in the art world. MI-5 isn't the only one looking for the painting, though, as many unsavory characters are after the very valuable painting as well and they all think Mortdecai has it or at least knows where it is.  

RIP Johnny Depp's career.

As an actor, one might ask themselves after making several awful movies in a row spanning over the course of an entire decade, "when is enough enough?" or "should I quit while I am ahead?" or "have I become a joke?"

Because seriously, Johnny Depp, your acting career has become a joke. As box office numbers are rolling in from the weekend, it looks like this flibbity-flop only made around $4 million dollars. Yikes.

"Mortdecai" is another film in an unprecedentedly long list of mediocre or downright terrible January releases, with the exception of "Paddington." Movies released initially in December that "go wide" in January don't count, these are bonafide January releases, folks. The rough outline of this film seemed to be decent enough and seemed to have a lot of potential, but then filmmakers went and fed us this drivel. Watch Johnny Depp fumble and bumble and make weird grunting noises on his way to phoning it in for another paycheck by cheaply and offensively adding every single British stereotype known to man into his character. Charlie Mortdecai, an ignoramus of the highest level, who is a known thief and art dealer, somehow finds himself in the middle of a stolen portrait debacle. He resides in a mansion with his wif. If we ever got a look into Gwyneth Paltrow's day to day existence, the way her character Johanna Mortdecai acts is exactly how we'd expect her to be in real life: snobby, snotty, rude as hell, pretentious, willing to send her husband out of the room for a minor disagreement, and seductive in order to get what she wants all while gallivanting around in a fake British accent. We honestly believe Goop walks around her enormous mansion all by herself talking down to people while donning a phony British accent. Ewan McGregor, who is typically a favorite of ours, cannot even salvage this movie, though he's clearly the best part of this trainwreck, if best here means 1/10th of how good he normally is. Paul Bettany is fine, we guess, and with a better movie behind him, we may have been able to watch him shine as Jock, but here, he just looks like an idiot's henchman because he is. Jeff Goldblum, once again, is criminally underutilized in this movie. Olivia Munn is pointless. Her boyfriend is pointless. The plot is basic and the movie is so stale, it makes stale bread look like a fresh loaf just pulled from the oven.

"Mortdecai" is bad any way you slice it, but with Johnny Depp at the helm of this project, well, that's an extra cherry on the large mound of crap that is this film. It is not funny, not charming, not slick, not sly, not devious. It reminds us of someone trying so hard to attempt a British accent that they end up looking like a buffoon. Oh wait, it's because he is!!! Maybe this story would have been better as a dark comedy and not as a silly one, but we will never know. This winds up being an inexplicably R-rated "Pink Panther" knockoff with humor that appeals to a demographic that cannot see an R-rated movie. It's also hard to say it's a waste of a talented cast because we don't know how long it has been since Johnny Depp has been truly talented. His whole shtick in this film doesn't work whatsoever. When you leave a movie theater and your first reaction is, "that was ROUGH!!," you know you've just witnessed something resembling a turd in a punch bowl.

My Rating: 3/10
BigJ's Rating: 3/10
IMDB's Rating: 5.4/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 11%
Do we recommend this movie: AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE!!!

2 comments:

  1. one of these days I will remember to read your review BEFORE watching... I lasted 20 minutes before losing interest.. it reminds me of a really bad Mr Magoo. however, that would insult Mr Magoo.
    What in the world has happened to Johnny Depp?!?! I've been so disappointed in his work lately...

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    1. LOL! You never know, we could be wrong! It's hard to maintain interest when it looks like the actors don't even want to be there or involved in the project. Johnny Depp used to make amazing movies, maybe his new one, "Black Mass," which just had a new trailer today, will be his resurrection!!

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