Since Christy no longer lives with me, I am no longer beholden to her wretched taste in movies, except for once a month where I am forced from my ivory tower of snobbery. I present to you the resurgence of the Christy Experiment!
Charlie Mortdecai (Johnny Depp) is an English lord with a fondness for art and a severe cash flow problem. Martland (Ewan McGregor) works for her Majesty's government and loathes Mortdecai, having lost out to him over the affections of beautiful Johanna (Gwyneth Paltrow), but needs the reprobate's help in locating a stolen painting. The piece is believed to have the Swiss bank account number of an infamous Nazi written on the back and is sought after by an American collector (Jeff Goldblum), an international terrorist (Jonny Pasvolsky), and a Russian mobster (Ulrich Thomsen).
The January release date is the first clue that this is going to be a terrible movie. Johnny Depp's ridiculous costume should be the second one. Honestly, I don't know what is going on with him but it looks like a mid-life crisis. This film is completely devoid of originality, wit or fun and it desperately needed all three. Mortdecai is a bumbling half-wit aided by a long-suffering servant in the vein of Jeeves and Wooster but without the knowing wink of the latter. The plot shambles along like a drunken frat boy at a wedding, practically begging the audience to enjoy its repetitive mustache jokes under the mistaken impression that if something is said in a British accent, it is automatically funny. It was almost physically painful to watch a once-respected actor reduced to over-reliance on props. And yet...there was a sense that something buried in the material was worth filming. Maybe the source novels would be worth picking up, to see if it was just a misfire rather than a deliberate affront.
The one bright spot in all this is Paul Bettany, who not only escapes unscathed from this trainwreck but manages to lift the interactions in which he's involved. He is the only performer worth watching and has somehow managed to get progressively hotter in each role he has taken. Now that's a superpower worthy of The Vision.
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