I took a bullet for you all on this one. Mortdecai needed two things to be a success: Blake Edwards and Dudley Moore. It reminded me of just how brilliant Edwards was at making this kind of madcap, crazy romp.

Instead, Johnny Depp puts on a very thick caricature reminiscent of a Harvey Korman creation for almost two hours in a piece that isn’t horrible, just strangely…lousy. There is nothing slapdash about this effort. Real time, money, and effort was spent producing this very expensive skit. A big part of the problem is that we’ve become so used to Depp going over-the-top that there’s no delightful surprise to any of it. It’s too amped. It’s like doing too much cocaine just because you can afford it; eventually it becomes destructive and obnoxious.

Full disclosure: I’m a huge Gwyneth Paltrow fan and cannot be objective, but I thought she was the best thing in the film. Ewan McGregor can do almost anything, but he couldn’t find a way to look comfortable as the wacky cop in love with Mortdecai’s wife (Paltrow). Nope. Other than that, the director (David Koepp) needed to throw in much better, high-caliber character actors everywhere, just like Blake Edwards used to do.

It’s like spending all day to make a Thanksgiving dinner that’s just mediocre. Every thing’s there; it just doesn’t taste that good. Ever since “Charlie and the Chocolate factory I’ve had this fantasy of kidnapping Johnny Depp and Leo DiCaprio and whisking them to a safe-house where they’re stripped and forced to trade film projects with each other. It would be in both their best interests.

Don’t see this.

(Loudinni specializes in movie reviews you can read in less than a minute-usually.)

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