Mortdecai

It’s all about the mustache! Everyone involved with this one thought it would just be horribly hilarious to have a strange, handlebar mustache on Johnny Depp.

Is this some desperate attempt by Depp to impress the hipsters?

A swing at scoring some endorsement deal with a shaving company?

It feels more like the beginning of the end of his career.

Depp stars as Lord Mortdecai – a shady art dealer facing big tax problems. Mortdecai and his wife, Johanna (Gwyneth Paltrow), owe eight million pounds to the British government, and must pay within five days.

Just when it looks like they may have to sell off all of their prized possessions, an art restoration expert is murdered, and the painting she was working on was taken. Many believe the artwork might have been a rare lost treasure, so Mi5 is investigating, and agent Alistair Martland (Ewan McGregor) brings Mortdecai in to find it, since our hero is very familiar with the underground, black market scene.

Will Mortdecai stop talking about his mustache long enough to find the painting?

How many ways can I tell you this stinks?

I am not kidding. Mortdecai is all about the mustache, whether you like it or not. Only 14-year old boys talk this much about growing a mustache.

Writer Eric Aronson (based on the novel by Kyril Bonfiglioli) and director David Koepp constantly have Mortdecai talking about his mustache, asking people to comment on how the mustache looks, getting into fights with his wife about his mustache and trying to form a brotherhood with other men displaying some fuzz on their top lip. Depp seems to find all of this to be the height of comedy. You will not.

Mortdecai is horrendously written and paced. The audience is presented with some sort of mystery about who the thief might be, but none of it matters as Mortdecai is sent jetting all over the globe in plot advancements just thrown at the screen to help the movie’s overseas appeal.

Worst of all, this should be a madcap comedy, but it isn’t funny enough and the jokes don’t come fast enough. Mortdecai is not nearly as wacky as the people on screen want you to believe. I wish I had some of what they were having. Maybe then I would have laughed.

Then, the movie just won’t end. Koepp and Aronson keep Mortdecai limping along with attempts at slapstick flopping all the way, moments of randy humor falling flat and double entendres missing an entendre.

You get the feeling Koepp, Aronson and Depp wish Mortdecai would be Austin Powers.

Mortdecai is rated R for some language and sexual material.