Mortdecai

Charlie Mortdecai (Johnny Depp) is enormously proud of his newly-grown mustache, which is probably the most distracting and pointless part of the film though it is constantly at the fore.  Mustache aside, Mortdecai is descended of an aristocratic English family and something of an art expert but he has fallen into financial difficulty.  In an effort to get some cash, he is in Hong Kong to sell a rare Chinese vase to a shady collector.  Sadly, it turns out that he cheated this very collector in a previous sale and there is now going to be violent retribution.  Luckily, Mortdecai brought his manservant, Jock (Paul Bettany), who proves to be a hardy fighter.  The pair escape but the vase is destroyed as is the money.  He has hardly returned to his English estate when Martland (Ewan McGregor) of MI-5, who happens to be an old acquaintance from university, pressures him to investigate a certain painting.

When I saw the preview for this movie, I thought it was going to be a detective movie.  Mortdecai looked to be an unconventional inspector with ulterior motives.  Nope, he's just a conman who specializes in fine art.

 

The plot is actually quite good.  There's a missing painting from a Spanish master that may have the Swiss bank account for a Nazi bigwig on the back.  Russians, terrorists, and rival collectors are all trying to get the painting.  What a great McGuffin.  This could have been a great caper movie if the lame comedy bits had just been dropped.  Rather than a cowardly oaf, I would like to have seen Mortdecai as a shrewd but desperate rogue trying to save his estate.  That is what he did but it came across as more fool's luck than calculated genius.  The constant nonsense about the mustache was grating.  Yes, the titular character is a lily-livered buffoon with a hugely over-inflated and unjustified ego.

 

Just as with Mortdecai, the rest of the characters are almost universally difficult to like.  Johanna (Gwyneth Paltrow) is mostly a nag who is apparently nauseated by her husband's silly mustache and only too happy to make him believe she is about to have an affair with Martland.  Martland spends most of the movie trying to get Johanna into bed, often using his MI-5 channels to get Mortdecai out of the country to better enable such a tryst.  Jock is ever eager to suffer severe injury in the service of Mortdecai, much of that injury delivered by none other than Mortdecai.  Also, for no apparent reason, he attracts women like he was in an Axe commercial.  The villains are all some combination of avarice and stupidity with a large dollop of animosity toward Mortdecai.  Not surprisingly, this does not play well as comedy.

 

It is no wonder this movie bombed.  Best avoided.