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'Mortdecai': A bit barmy and pointless

As you might have guessed from the daft and something-short-of-hilarious TV ads, Mortdecai is an extended inside Anglo joke that most of us aren't in on.

Johnny Depp is Charlie Mortdecai, an art dealer and tax dodger, who is searching for a missing Goya painting, and Gwyneth Paltrow is his wife who might leave him if they're broke in "Mortdecai."
Johnny Depp is Charlie Mortdecai, an art dealer and tax dodger, who is searching for a missing Goya painting, and Gwyneth Paltrow is his wife who might leave him if they're broke in "Mortdecai."Read more
    by Roger Moore, TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE, Inquirer
    Published 

As you might have guessed from the daft and something-short-of-hilarious TV ads, Mortdecai is an extended inside Anglo joke that most of us aren't in on.

But for a certain sort of Anglophile, one who recognizes the attempted homage to 1960s comedies, the late comics Terry-Thomas and Dudley Moore and other inspirations for Mike Myers' Austin Powers pictures, Mortdecai is something less than awful.

If watching Johnny Depp mince and curl his "Kaiser Bill" mustache and quip in his most foppish Brit accent for 100 minutes is your cup of Earl Grey, have at it.

Charlie Mortdecai is an English lord, an inbred art dealer, tax dodger, and, by his own admission, "a rogue, a scoundrel." But when the Crown calls on him to find a missing Goya painting that was stolen when an art restorer was murdered, duty calls. That, and he owes $8 million in taxes, and his bullying beauty of a wife (Gwyneth Paltrow) might leave him if they're broke.

Ewan McGregor plays a former Oxford classmate, now an MI-5 agent, who wants this painting back and pines for Mortdecai's wife. Paul Bettany is Jock, the Kato to Depp's Clouseau-like klutz. Jock takes punches and bullets for his boss, who always asks his driver, "manservant and thug" one thing - mid-calamity: "Will it be all right in the end?" Jock refuses a straight answer. With reason, it turns out.

The movie rather pointlessly jets from London to Moscow, Hong Kong to Los Angeles. Others want the painting - a colorless lot of Russians, Chinese and an American. Jeff Goldblum has too little to play with to give the film a decent comic foil and a much-needed arch villain.

What director David Koepp (Premium Rush) was shooting for was something on the order of those Peter Sellers Pink Panther movies - unlikely, over-the-top adventures endured by a reluctant anti-hero goofball. What he settled for is Depp twitching and mugging, in close-up, enduring an endless parade of mustache jokes.

The story is nonsensical, the action tepid. So if you don't find the Brit-quips funny, there's not much for you in Mortdecai.

MOVIE REVIEW

Mortdecai ** (Out of four stars)

Directed by David Koepp. With Johnny Depp, Gwyneth Paltrow, Paul Bettany, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Goldblum. Distributed by Lionsgate.

Running time: 1 hour, 46 mins.

Parent's guide: R (language, sexual material).

Playing at: area theaters.

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