The poster is awful. The premise is awful. To be frank, quite a lot about it is awful: a middle-aged comedy caper of the kind not seen since Peter Sellers’s final outings as Clouseau and Fu Manchu. But in its dopey and silly way, it does deliver one or two daft laughs.
Some rather grumpy critical reactions were beginning to coagulate around this film online this week. There are other, more solemnly middlebrow offerings that deserve this treatment more. Johnny Depp plays Lord Mortdecai, moustachioed art dealer and international man of mystery who is on the trail of a stolen Goya; he is one step ahead of Scotland Yard, in the form of stern Inspector Martland, played by Ewan McGregor, who happens to be in love with Mortdecai’s wife, Johanna, played simperingly and not entirely tolerably by Gwyneth Paltrow.
As in the Pirates of the Caribbean series, Depp’s English accent is learned from Paul Whitehouse (shut your eyes and it could be him), who gets an uneasy cameo. Depp gamely goes for a mugging, gurning, ’tache-twirling performance. We get some nice gags: there’s one about serving up overripe cheese. But then the whole thing is a bit overripe.
