Mortdecai - Cinema Review

The trailer for this film looked so painfully unfunny that a friend of mine actually dared me to go and see it. I thought i might at least get some mileage out of it as an example of the fetid state of film comedy. How Mortdecai is nothing more than a glorified Carry-On film with crude disgracing stains of performances on the respectable actors it has roped into it.

Instead i just left feeling bored and unsatisfied. Mortdecai isn't so bad it's mockable yet certainly isn't good enough in its own right. It isn't entirely the "ooer missus" tripe the trailer suggests but instead offers the same tired old action-comedy heist hijinks we've seen a thousand times before. That is not to say the film isn't laden with sexual innuendo, guys in embarassing pants, women in revealing or sexualising attire and things of that ilk. It just also has some rather unremarkable slapstick action sequences and a bland cliched plot involving missing famous paintings and hidden nazi treasure.

Film of the year however if you can forever find humour in the noise "EOEHW?!"

It's difficult to certify what audience Mortdecai is actually intended for. It feels numbingly similar to movies like Johnny English or other goofy spy romps but the frequent sex themes prevent it being advisable as a family film and the calibre of the comedy isn't high enough to overlook the uninteresting plot and give it any appeal to adults. The cinema i viewed it in was moderately populated and whilst a few laughs were heard, they were nowhere near as frequent as the film signposted and begged for.

I admittedly found mild amusement in the interactions between Mortdecai and his "manservant" Jock who is just unashamedly a thuggish bodyguard who follows Mortdecai around and constantly prevents his death while being repeatedly battered, shot and beaten. It's like any protagonist from a Jason Statham film being ripped out and having to play butler to a blithering, oblivious toff. Others seemed to find some humour in the sexual frustrations of Johhny Depp and Ewan McGregor's characters both fighting for the affections of Gwyneth Paltrow but it's all so mishandled...for want of a better term.

 The film is not so bereft as to call it empty but with nothing else to offer but its lacklustre humour, it's a thin strand of grass masquerading as a rope bridge. I don't quite think the character of Mortdecai and his world is without comedy potential but it was thoroughly squandered and poorly executed here.

In conclusion, Mortdecai should have been a sequence in a sketch show at best, not attempting to support an entire film with globetrotting gangster chases, upper-class marital troubles, spies, terrorists, art aficionados and their boners in a posh British accent.

In this scene he is caught groping another woman by his wife...There is no consequence to this action or most of the other actions present anywhere in the film...