Mortdecai

Nothing stings more than a bad comedy. Other genres of film can survive when their supporting elements aren’t as fine-tuned, but when their key component isn’t up to standard, people are going to pay attention (bad action in an action film, bad drama in a dramatic movie, a bad romance in a romantic film, etc) and of those options, comedy is one of the most subjective elements in media, so if it is unanimously hated, it’s clearly done something very wrong, and the 2015 Lionsgate film, Mortdecai, is very wrong in so many ways. Lord Charlie Mortdecai (played by Johnny Depp) is a swindling art dealer who finds himself caught up in dangerous situations that his faithful manservant, Jock (played by Paul Bettany) always has to get him out of. He is currently struggling with bankruptcy and he and his wife, Joanna (played by Gwyneth Paltrow) are trying to find ways of working off their massive debt. His art expertise is called to attention when he is tasked by Inspector Alistair Martland (played by Ewan McGregor) to help track down a suspect responsible for killing an art curator and stealing a famous painting. As Mortdecai and Jock go globetrotting to find the culprit, Joanna starts doing her own digging back home and unveils a mystery that seems to be surrounding this painting, all the while Alistair (who is deeply in love with her) tries to move his way into her and Mortdecai’s crumbling relationship. Both parallel stories collide as the pieces start to fall into play, all leading up to a final auction for the painting which will hopefully reveal the one responsible for the crime, solve the motive for the murder, and pay off the debts that Mortdecai owes. A notorious example of a horrendous comedy that couldn’t have come at a worse time for a struggling Johnny Depp, this film was a gigantic flop at the box office and was critically destroyed by any who dared to give it a second glance. While it might not result in visceral anger, it is easily one of the most soulless, insusceptible, and barren comedies ever made in the recent decade.

The character of Mortdecai as well as the plot this film is based on, comes from a series of comic thriller novels written by English novelist, Kyril Bonfiglioli, specifically the first book, Don’t Point that Thing at Me, made in 1972. Being an art dealer himself who seems to carry a lot of similar attributes that the character of Mortdecai is described to have, his books grew a cult following over the years and were well regarded for their wit, dark humor, and dry satire. In spite of the praise laid at its source material, none was directed at this film, with most critics and audiences pelting it from every angle, and much of that just comes from the fact that it’s not a smart idea to turn these stories into a movie. Considering they were released in the 70s, these novels may have merit in literacy form, but don’t seem to offer a ton of new material that hasn’t already been explored in other stories and satires, and it feels like nothing fresh or creative can be brought from bringing these books into a visual format, especially in 2015. This predicament can be felt all throughout the movie, with dialogue that feels thirty years old (because that’s roughly how old the source material is), characters that have little going for them outside of a single one-note gag, a mystery that feels more drawn-out and needlessly complicated rather than logical and engaging, and a pacing and structure that is so slow and meandering despite its limited running time due to how little actually happens in the plot. The director for this movie was David Koepp, whose library of work consists of writing credits on movies like Mission: Impossible, Jurassic Park and its sequel Lost World, Spider-Man, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, with his directing credits being equally as much of a mixed bag with The Trigger Effect, Stir of Echoes, Secret Window, Ghost Town, and Premium Rush. Koepp has always had an issue with clunky expositional dialogue, and that mixed with the fact that it was originally a book, means this movie is very overwritten, with dialogue that is heavy on exposition, muddled in execution, and surprisingly hard to follow despite being a very basic murder mystery with a quirky comedic edge. The writer for this film, Eric Aronson, only had one other credit to his name prior to working on this feature, which no doubt added to the film’s garbage screenplay that fails in basic storytelling and especially in comedy.

For a movie this small in scale, some of the cast members are anything but cheap. While most of them aren’t huge names and the ones that are were struggling with a rough patch in their career (Johnny Depp’s issues started long before he had to deal with a spotty marriage), they were recognizable names regardless and probably where a majority of the $60 million budget went to (because it doesn’t look like it went to anything else). Even though they have a cast of this calibre who have proven plenty of times beforehand that they’re capable of being funny as well as dramatic, the lack of quality material, comedic pacing, and spark behind its direction and writing, makes every line feel like it’s stripping away at a person’s mind. These roles are not characters, they are voices that the actors are exaggerating for the pure intent of trying to get a laugh out of nothing, and it’s horrendous having to suffer through something so soul-crushingly unfunny to the point that everything just starts to feel annoying, even if it isn’t intending to give a punchline. Johnny Depp has played roles with annoying voices before (his later roles like Willy Wonka and The Mad Hatter are clear signs of that), but this role of Mortdecai really feels like one of the worst as there is absolutely nothing to work with outside of a goofy voice and a stupid moustache. His lines are generic, his personality is non-existent, and it feels like Depp is too focused on thinking he sounds funny and just going stupid, rather than focusing on building a character and making the character entertaining to the audience. It doesn’t even feel like they needed Depp in the first place, as none of his strengths as a performer feel represented in this character, just coming across like an excuse to get a big-name actor in a starring role. Everybody else is pretty much just as bad, and while they aren’t as painful to stomach due to being a bit more subdued, they are still so lacking in character and intrigue that they don’t even feel like actors, more like generic voice-overs coming out of wax models. Paul Bettany in the role of a tough, cockney-accented bodyguard, does feel against type for him as an actor and on paper, could be enjoyable, but as previously stated, it doesn’t feel like a character, but rather an exaggerated voice, so there’s nothing to latch onto. Paltrow brings nothing to the table, Olivia Munn is literally just there to be eye-candy, Ewan McGregor feels like he’s dead inside and reciting lines out of pity, and the film even makes Jeff Goldblum dull and uninteresting (how is that even possible?), it is an all-around waste of a lot of talented people.

The movie’s style and color palette is quite preppy and glossy in moments, like it wants to visually mock upper-class society and highlight the more ridiculous elements that come with it through a satirical quirky comedy. Sometimes, the production design by James Merifield is colorful and articulate enough to get that point across, but not only has this again been handled better in other projects that had more personality and flavor, but the movie doesn’t push this element far enough to make it feel intentional.  A majority of the film is just kept in generic locations that don’t have a lot of visual appeal to them, so in spite of some bright colors and lavish buildings, it isn’t a very interesting looking movie and even the cinematography by Florian Hoffmeister lacks any flair in its staging. There’s almost a Wes Anderson quality to some of the shots, especially when it presents a medium shot of two people talking (which happens a LOT in this movie), but even that is giving this film too much credit, as Anderson’s work (whether good or bad) has style to it and intentionally stages scenes as such in order to create a strange mood, whereas this film has no fresh style, atmosphere or tone, so it just feels like an attempt at replicating a style without the content or purpose to back it up. It wants to have some kind of zany personality to it with some of the transitions featuring these enlarged fonts regarding the areas they’re travelling to, but that’s really all that comes from it as everything else is very by-the-numbers and the humor, while wacky and wild, is anything but creative. It’s very annoying how unfunny this film is, mostly because it just feels like they aren’t trying in the slightest to be funny. Every joke is several years old, the timing of the jokes is off, you’re just stuck thinking about how the joke is either going to end because it’s expected or think about how it could’ve actually been done better with a different punchline, nothing is going to surprise you, and nothing is going to entertain you either.

Mortdecai was regarded as one of the worst films of the 2010s and for good reason, but it isn’t painful in the sense of every joke is going to result in a harsh reaction, it’s just going to leave you feeling nothing. It’s like experiencing a patch of fog that refuses to go away and leaves you stuck in a singular place for what feels like an eternity. It will give you nothing new, it won’t offer anything you won’t see done better in other material, and it’s best to just leave this film sizzling in its own trash and keep your sights on actual good comedies worth your time. The story is predictable, the characters are stale, the acting is annoying, the humor never works, the production feels wasted and lacking direction, and for something should be insanely easy to handle due to how simplistic the outline is, it fails in practically every department. It’s not like it needs anymore people throwing hate on it as it definitely got plenty of that when it came out (being nominated three times at the years Golden Raspberry Awards is no small feat), so it’s honestly just for the best that it fades out of everybody’s memory. When a moustache is your biggest running gag, chances are you never should’ve been made in the first place.