Talkie Tuesday: Mortdecai

"Don't imbibe the crime scene!"

Hello everyone!

Last week was a bit of a fluke, considering the fact that the whole seaside trip wasn't really something I thought would happen in the end, but it did, and so I am once again a bit behind on my blogging, but from now on I do believe it should all be in the clear! 

Before I begin properly typing this blog out, however, I'd like to give a shout-out to the fact that this year's show season is officially starting again! Yeah, I'm a little bit of a dork in that matter, but Dancing with the Stars premiered last night and I'm really happy about that since it's one of my absolute favourites. What can I say, I like dance! And it's amusing, too.

Back to my blog, after watching a lot of fantasy for a couple of nights in a row, I finally decided I needed something else that wasn't going to make me remember any red capes or growing beans, so I fished out a movie I was unsure about from simply watching the trailer, since I didn't know whether it was supposed to be a comedy, a drama, a crime solving thing, or ... what?

If you're thinking about whether or not your man needs that moustache of his, you've guessed right that I'll be talking about Mortdecai.

Now, I will freely admit that I wasn't initially sold on the movie, mostly because I had seen the trailer once in theatre and then looked for it again online at another point so that I could watch it in the comfort of my own home. While it obviously had some humour, it didn't make much sense to me half the time, but what - or better said, WHO - sold it for me was Johnny Depp.

Okay, I will freely admit this, here and now: I'm probably not what you would call a typical Depp fan. The people I know who call themselves that pretty much swoon whenever they see his face pass over the screen. My sister, and my female cousins, all attest to that.

To me, though, he has never been that, just a really good actor from the movies of his I've seen so far. And, obviously, his role as Jack Sparrow has probably landed him in our memories forever.

Basically, this movie here, about Mortdecai, is a sort of British version of our favourite Captain, even though I didn't initially make the connection, and also, Captain Jack tends to be a little more resourceful than Mortdecai, sadly so since they're both awfully clumsy.

The movie starts off in a rather seedy club setting where he seems to be negotiating a deal, and it took a little bit for me to figure out that he's an art dealer, and probably a good schemer, to a certain degree. That last thought was quickly thrown out the window as the whole thing collapsed, and he had to be rescued from a sticky situation by Paul Bettany in the role of his man servant.

So then we go on to learn a few more things: that Jock, said man servant, has been with Mortdecai for a long time now, basically does everything you can imagine for the man; that Mortdecai is about eight million pounds in debt, and needs to somehow repay it without losing his property; that he has a beautiful, willy wife, played by Gwyneth Paltrow to perfection; and that Ewan McGregor could really pull off the whole MI5 look more often in his movie career. Oh, did I mention his character covets said wife character? That, too.

Mortdecai enters the scene of a crime because, for lack of other respectable art connoisseur, he's their only choice, and so he gets roped into a search for a missing Goya painting, which is said to hold on its back numbers to a bank account with immesurable sums. This then becomes a world-wide painting hunt which leads poor clumsy Mortdecai from the UK to Russia, to Los Angeles, and back to London, leaving absolute chaos in his wake.

And in the meantime, inspector McGregor (that's not his real name, but really, it suits him!) is after his wife, who, in turn, is hunting for the missing Goya on her own, with a lot more success, might I add.

Johnny Depp displays once more he's a master at playing completely incapable characters even with a split between their front teeth, and I roll around laughing when he mistakes an LA hotel for the set of a pornographic movie.

The painting is eventually discovered to be a fake, the real one cleverly hidden away in an old Duke's toilet (oh, yes), and a very cleverly executed auction brings Mortdecai the funds he needs, his wife's admiration, and a bit of a break.

Mostly, the movie is about how love is rediscovered between two people who've been married for a while and seem to have found it dully by then, but it's also a hilarious portrait of a character who can't even tie his shoes on his own without managing to wrangle them together. Not to mention, the cast was superb in their respective roles (and the moustache jokes were ALL over the place!)

I enjoyed the movie as an easygoing night in with some popcorn and preparation for ... just about anything! And Johnny Depp once again showed us what it means to run ... like you've never run before.

xx

*images and video not mine