Mortdecai Review

Mortdecai
Lazy and bankrupt nobleman Charlie Mortdecai (Depp) must come up with millions of pounds to save his family’s manor. With a spurious chance of getting this hands on some Nazi gold, he accepts a mission from MI5’s Inspector Martland (McGregor) to recover a lost Goya painting, while his wife Joanna (Paltrow) performs her own separate investigations.

by Ali Plumb |
Published on
Release Date:

23 Jan 2015

Running Time:

107 minutes

Certificate:

12A

Original Title:

Mortdecai

A cross between The Fast Show’s “very, very drunk” Rowley Birkin QC and a particularly randy dandy, Johnny Depp’s Charlie Mortdecai is a degenerate art dealer who prats about the globe in this hyperposh panto based on the comic crime novels of Kyril Bonfiglioli. Broad and bonkers, the film revels in its verbosity – Jeff Goldblum is a “thick-fingered vulgarian” – but lacks solid jokes, instead relying on the outlandishness of its arch characters and some upper-class farce to see it through. Very close to disastrous, there's an unavoidable feeling that Gwyneth Paltrow and co. are having much more fun than you are, what?

Though the books are brilliant, Depp’s attempt to make his own Terry-Thomas movie feels tired and more than a little tortured.
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