When it comes to judging someone, when do you stop judging on what that person has done and start judging him or her on what they are doing? It can be a hard thing to watch performances by someone that you enjoy, do something bad, because just like a bad relationship, all you seem to remember is the good times. There have been many actors this has happened to, greats like Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Johnny Depp. Now you might ask am I playing one of those, which one of these doesn’t belong, games? I might be because I did use the word great, and there has been nothing great about the choices Johnny Depp has been making lately.
While most people have tired of Depp’s need to wear a mustache and talk in a funny accent, I support his need to express his love for facial hair, I just wish he didn’t have to make a movie to flaunt it. Depp is at it again, this time he plays Lord Charlie Mortdecai, a man who has hit hard times, owing a rather large amount in back taxes. Mortdecai, it seems knows a thing or two about art, and when a painting goes missing, Agent Martland (Ewan McGregor) seeks Mortdecai’s knowledge of the art black market to help him discover where the painting is. Martland chooses Mortdecai because of their time at school together and Martland’s obsession with Mortdecai’s wife Johanna (Gwyneth Paltrow). Mortdecai, along with his man servant Jock (Paul Bettany) start their mission to find the lost painting, before the other cast of characters, that also seek it, find it first.
As I watched this film, I kept wondering to myself, who is this movie made for? Eric Aronson, who adapted the story from the novel by Kyrill Bonfiglioli, wrote the screenplay and while maybe the novel was good, the story seems lost most of the time on the big screen. I think the blame lies solely on Depp, who seems to want to play different variations of Captain Jack Sparrow in every movie now. Of course you could ask why wouldn’t he, those films grossed a ton of dollars, and have made Depp a very rich man, so rich, that he can do whatever he wants. What he enjoys doing most is playing characters at the furthest extreme, but they always seem to be the same. The film is labeled an action/comedy but the only comedy the film possesses is in it’s action scenes, from bad special effects, to just bad action period. This is not a good film at all, but with the choices Depp has been making the last few years, it is kind of expected. I would say that it would be great for Depp to take roles that showed off his acting ability, but I think this is all he had to begin with. Depp has made a career of playing characters like this, and as a fan of movies, I kind of just wish he would stop. Instead we are left with films like this one, a film that will leave you truly mortified by the end.
Brian Taylor
