Mortdecai Review

Comedy [Kom-i-dee], noun - professional entertainment consisting of jokes and satirical sketches, intended to make an audience laugh.

The genres listed atop the IMDB page for the new film Mortdecai: Action/Comedy

Something doesn't quite add up here.

Now, it would be easy to call me out right off the bat here and say that even if I didn't find the film funny, the definition of comedy involves the intention of making an audience laugh, not actually achieving it. I get that, but I still feel calling Mortdecai a comedy is misleading despite this. Why? Because I refuse to believe a human being could write this screenplay and truly believe it would elicit laughter. 

When I was 14 years old I wrote a short story titled "Don't Press Stop or John Stamos Will Shoot" and the premise involved actor John Stamos using his neighbors VCR (a machine that plays tapes, for those younger readers out there) and somehow being transported inside it, and thus he is forced to play a role in every single tape put in going forward while he searches for a means to escape. Why do I bring this up? Because I was a fat, weird 14 year old who was probably eating his own boogers while I walked home from school, and I can promise you what I wrote was far and away more successfully comedic than the film Mortdecai.

I'm not bragging or patting myself on the back, my writing was likely shit and I'm sure multiple attempts at humor in my story missed the mark. That's precisely my point, that even still, compared to this screenplay my story would have probably gotten a standing ovation. So no, Mortdecai isn't a comedy. It doesn't even deserve to be referred to as a comedy, even if you put the word "bad" or "awful" in front of it.

Can someone explain to me what Johnny Depp is even doing anymore? What in god's name is happening? I mean, I never loved the guy, but this has to be rock bottom. If you have seen the Judd Apatow picture Funny People, you may recall that the character played by Adam Sandler, George Simmons, had been in many clearly terrible films that by merely looking at the posters they created for them you had to laugh, not because they were actually worthy of it but because you couldn't believe how awful they were. One of them was called Re-Do and the image is of Sandler but as a giant baby in a diaper. Another is titled MerMan and it features Sandler flying in the air, half human being, half mermaid. The implication here is that George Sanders was once a promising presence in comedy, and his career turned into total shit and he phoned it in for the money.

So now that you know what I am referring to, just take a look at the poster for Mortdecai. Essentially, Johnny Depp is the fictional George Sanders.

I laughed at multiple times during this film, but not because the material worked or the completely outlandish and unfunny lead performance achieved anything worth while. I laughed because I couldn't believe what I was watching. I couldn't make sense of seeing all these recognizable movie stars in the same frame, saying these words and this being a cinematic release that a studio thought was a good idea, even if it was relegated to the wastelands of January. 

Alright, that's enough. I can't waste any more time on this "movie" Do me a favor: if you feel even the slightest urge to see Mortdecai while standing in line at the box office this weekend, go ahead and purchase a ticket but don't walk away after it is handed to you. Just look the teenager behind the glass in the eye and punch yourself in the face really, really hard, shake it off and collect yourself, and then pass the ticket back to him and ask for a refund. Now, go see ANYTHING else. You will thank me later.

0.5/5