Mortdecai

David Koepp's Mortdecai makes a big mistake early on, and then it just keeps on making that mistake over and over.  It thinks that a comedy can get laughs just by having people acting funny, instead of actually being funny.  This is a stunningly tone deaf farce that seems like it was made by amateurs, which is why it's shocking to see pros like Koepp, Johnny Depp, Gwyneth Paltrow, Paul Betany and Ewan McGregor involved.

The main culprit behind the film's failure is Depp, who plays Charlie Mortdecai, an art dealer and part-time con artist.  His portrayal of Charlie is that of a cartoonish British aristocratic buffoon.  He speaks with a silly accent, has a paper-thin handlebar mustache above his lip, and behaves kind of like a cross between Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow and Austin Powers.  Depp is constantly up on the screen, expelling energy and throwing himself completely into the bizarre performance, but we do not laugh, because he never actually does or says anything that is funny.  We smile from time to time, but that's it.  It's not enough just to give an actor a goofy mustache and have him talk with a funny accent.  And yet, the movie keeps on throwing him up on the screen, and expects us to laugh at the mere sight of him over and over.

Why not really dig into the character, and give him a personality?  The most we learn is that he is a coward who is always getting himself into dangerous situations, and then being the first to run away, letting his manservant, Jock (Paul Bettany), handle the mess.  Bettany comes the closest to getting laughs in the film, as he underplays the character, unlike Depp.  The relationship between Mortdecai and Jock has the potential for laughs.  I kind of smiled the first time Mortdecai accidentally shot him while trying to help him.  But then, the movie repeats the gag.  It repeats a lot of gags, actually.  Most of the running gags revolve around Mortdecai's mustache, as if the movie is under the mistaken impression that it's the funniest thing in the world.  The most repeated gag in the film?  Whenever Mortdecai's wife (Gwyneth Paltrow) leans forward to kiss him, she has to back away and gag at the sight of the awful thing above his lip.  I forgot to keep track, but I wouldn't be surprised if this joke was repeated a good five or six times.

The movie has a large cast of supporting characters, played by recognizable actors like Jeff Goldblum and Olivia Munn.  But again, the screenplay gives them nothing to do, so they often come across as actors who just happened to be passing by the set on the day they were shooting, instead of characters involved in the plot.  What is the plot, you may ask?  A painting that is believed to have hidden information that could lead to a great fortune has gone missing, and a police inspector (Ewan McGregor) must turn to Charlie Mortdecai for help on the case.  The inspector is an old rival of Charlie's, as back in college, they were both in love with Paltrow's character.  The movie sets this idea up early on, and then does nothing with it.  It does this a lot, actually.  It keeps on introducing us to characters who supposedly have a connection to Mortdecai, and then it does so little with them that we wonder why they were introduced in the first place.

Maybe you need to have read the series of books by Kyril Bonfiglioli in order to know how these characters fit into the story and who they are.  All I know is that everybody in Mortdecai is either personality deprived, or built around a single visual gag that the movie repeats every time the character is on screen.  Just like Depp, everyone is forced to speak in silly accents, projectile vomit and get slapped around in broad slapstick fights that don't generate laughs, because there is nothing behind the joke.  These are characters we have no investment in, so why should we laugh when a box falls on their head?  This movie often plays like a Three Stooges film if we had no idea who Moe, Larry and Curly were, or their relationship to each other.  It would be just three guys poking each other in the eyes for no reason, and we would lose interest immediately.

The filmmakers were obviously going for a Pink Panther tone with its comedy, as the slapstick farce mixed with the detective story often brings to mind the films that featured Peter Sellers as the bungling Clouseau.  But the movie misses the point completely in just about every way.  To be fair, the actors up on the screen do look like they're having fun.  Too bad the audience isn't.

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