People have described it as a bit of Pink Panther thing. Which I guess will be OK for Johnny Depp. Because it's not far off and maybe the Captain Jack Sparrow comparisons will stop (probably not, but you can always hope can't you?). One thing is for sure, comedy is always something that will and can divide people easily. What some consider hilarious others will just dismiss as bad or annoying (or maybe something worse).

The mustache jokes will either delight you or not, but we do have a lot of adult situations here, even without going too far down that drain/road. Paltrow relishing in her role as is Law, who can relax for once and sit back and be somebody else (read: not that confident guy). It's a light affair (no pun intended),but if you are willing to let your guard down, you can have fun with it

Mortdecai (Johnny Depp) is a corrupt art dealer. His wife Johanna (Gwyneth Paltrow) is not happy with his new mustache and their impending insolvency. Jock (Paul Bettany) is his manservant and thug. When an art restorer is killed and a Goya is stolen, Mi5 Inspector Alistair Martland (Ewan McGregor) uses his old acquaintance Mortdecai. Alistair has a crush on Johanna but she was taken by Mortdecai back in their college days. Nazi chief Goering had supposedly written down secret Swiss bank account on the back of the middling Goya painting.

I've got to be honest. I laughed at the stupidity of it all for the first fifteen minutes. However it just doesn't work in the long term. I think this might work more if it gets stupider and more spoof-like. The jokes aren't sharp enough. Depp is flailing away and sometimes he hits on something. I love his insult to a henchman. "Your mother and father only met once. And money changed hands." But there isn't enough good stuff to be truly funny and it mostly falls flat. The harder Depp tries and fails, the sadder the movie gets.

"Mortdecai" is a British-American 105-minute movie from early this year. This one was talked about a lot before it came out, but the buzz died quickly after negative reception. And I can understand why. I am not familiar with Kyril Bonfiglioli, but if his work is popular enough to be used for a film with these actors, then it probably wasn't all bad. However, i have no idea why they got Eric Aronson as the guy who adapted it. He has only written one film so far, that was almost 15 years ago and it was a pretty bad movie looking at ratings and reviews. Why would he be the one to be responsible for a project of this caliber? I cannot really blame director David Koepp here. He was in charge of some good films in the past and probably may also have made this one work with a better script.

Same can be said about the actors for the most part. I think Paltrow and McGregor are on the embarrassing side, but Depp is okay with what he has to work with. The jokes simple are almost never funny, but that, once again, is the writer's project, not Depp's delivery. He showed us with "Black Mass" this year what he is capable of given the right material. Unfortunately, the lack of quality material here made "Mortdecai" another entry to his long list of style-over-substance films. The best thing here is probably Paul Bettany, who had some funny moments, especially with him constantly getting busy with young hot chicks. If anything about this movie is memorable, it's him. Unfortunately, Jeff Goldblum, who I like a lot is almost non-existent in here. Thomsen and Munn were wasted too.

This film is the perfect example of how the script is still the most crucial component of a movie, not the acting, not the directing. No matter how good these 2 areas are, they cannot save a film from becoming a failure because of a bad screenplay. Quite disappointing as the base material certainly offered room for a much better work here. The story is just bad all in all, especially when the film tries to make a dramatic impact. Not recommended.