♥♥♥♥
+ Most Expensive Flop of the Year: 41.12 mil. $ range
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| Johnny Depp is lounged on a chaise longue looking foolish beneath a smug Gwyneth Palthrow on this poster for David Koepp's Mortdecai |
Charlie Mortdecai is an anachronistic Brit, an art expert and a bon vivant. - But he is getting to be financially seriously on his tail, and so he agrees to help the MI5 in a case concerning lost art.
Mortdecai is written by Eric Aronson (On the Line (2002)), adapting the novel Don't Point that Thing at Me (1972) from the Mortdecai novel series by Kyril Bonfiglioli (All the Tea in China (1978)), and directed by David Koepp (The Trigger Effect (1996)).
The plot (and to some degree the film as such) is enormously forgettable, but blast me if I wasn't entertained and had a fun time while Mortdecai was on. Johnny Depp (Rango (2011)) is the affected title character, an occasion for having ingenious fun with more or less antiquated words and idioms from the English language, - paired with slapstick and vulgar elements, which hit the mark often for this reviewer, (if for few others.)
Ewan McGregor (Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002)) works well as Mortdecai's 'straight face', and Gwyneth Pathrow (Sylvia (2003)) is a sweet wife to Depp here, while Paul Bettany (Bent (1997)) is a real kick as a clenched-teeth, sex-mad man servant.
Mortdecai is elegantly directed in a laid-back style, which doesn't put the film's action elements in the foreground. Depp is a Peter Sellers-like comedic star here in my opinion.
Related post:
David Koepp: 2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
Carlito's Way (1993) - De Palma's best gangster movie (writer)
Cost: 60 mil. $
Box office: 47.2 mil. $
= Huge flop (returned 0.78 times its cost)
[Mortdecai premiered 21 January (Belgium, France) and runs 107 minutes. Shooting took place in England, including London, and in California, including Los Angeles, from October 2013 - ?. The film opened #9 to a 4.2 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it never improved its rank and grossed 7.6 mil. $ (16.1 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Japan with 6.2 mil. $ (13.1 %) and China with 3.5 mil. $ (7.4 %). Koepp returned with You Should Have Left (2020). Depp returned in Black Mass (2015); Palthrow in Nightcap (2016, TV-series) and theatrically in Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017); McGregor in Last Days in the Desert (2015). Mortdecai is rotten at 12 % with a 3.50/10 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of Mortdecai?
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