Johnny Depp Makes Funny Faces In The ‘Mortdecai’ Trailer

Here’s the first trailer for Mortdecai, starring Johnny Depp, which is sadly not about Richie Tenenbaum’s falcon. It stars human reaction shot generator Depp as the titular character and literally every single joke is Johnny Depp making a funny face.

Mortdecai is directed by David Koepp (Premium Rush, Stir of Echoes) and written by Eric Aronson (?), based on the ‘Charlie Mortdecai’ series by Kyril Bonfiglioli (???) who died in 1985. According to Wiki:

Charlie Mortdecai is the fictional art dealer anti-hero of the series. His character resembles, among other things, an amoral Bertie Wooster with occasional psychopathic tendencies.

Bonfiglioli’s style and novel structure have often been favourably compared to that of P. G. Wodehouse. Mortdecai and his manservant Jock Strapp bear a fun-house mirror relation to Wodehouse’s Wooster and Jeeves. The author makes a nod to this comparison by having Mortdecai reference Wodehouse in the novels.

The movie supposedly deals with “a stolen painting that’s reportedly linked to a lost bank account filled with Nazi gold,” but I say supposedly because the trailer mostly consists of Johnny Depp making silly faces while horns play (oh, and Gwyneth Paltrow!). It actually reminds me a lot of Colin Firth in Gambit, and I told you how that went.

I’ll be honest, I don’t get it. I double don’t get it. I can barely watch Farrelly Brothers movies that I loved in the 90s because a lot of the jokes don’t work anymore. Are they really expecting to take books from the 1970s (that borrow heavily from books written in the 1920s) and just stick the main character into 2014 with no explanation? It’s harder to laugh when you’re busy wondering why the main character always seems like he’s at a costume party. At least in The Brady Bunch or 21 Jump Street the part where they were unstuck in time was overtly part of the joke. Here I’m not sure what the joke is. You know, other than “mustaches!” Haha, get it? Mustaches are hilarious.

Trailers that focus heavily on the mustache angle are fast becoming the new nutshot in the trailer.

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