Bad Movies Inspire Great Critics: Mortdecai

Posted on January 24, 2015 at 3:35 pm

Johnny Depp’s “Mortdecai” is sure of a place of dishonor on the end of the year worst lists.  Business Insider and Huffington Post have some choice quotes from some of the movie’s best bad reviews, and I’ve found some good ones, too, including:

David Edelstein, New York Magazine

Having combed Roget’s Thesaurus in vain for a suitable adjective to describe the Johnny Depp comedy Mortdecai, I’m forced to say it’s just … bad…Depp is very, very bad. Watching his first scene, a bad echo of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, I thought he’d finally moved from emulating late (insane) Brando to late, slumming Peter Sellers and would spend the rest of movie swapping out wigs and accents. It quickly became clear that his bad, gap-toothed Terry-Thomas imitation (with extra eyebrow action) would be all she wrote. The badness settled over the audience like nuclear ash.

Rafer Guzman, Newsday

Depp’s grating, bug-eyed performance in this strenuously unfunny film may go down as a kind of psychotic break in his overacting career.

 Robbie Collin, Daily Telegraph

It’s hard to think of a way in which the experience of watching the new Johnny Depp film could be any worse, unless you returned home afterwards to discover that Depp himself had popped round while you were out and set fire to your house. This is comfortably the actor’s worst film since Alice in Wonderland, and even dedicated fans will find their hearts shrivelling up like week-old party balloons at its all-pervading air of clenched desperation.

Steven Holden, The New York Times

hat a frantically dull spectacle this vanity project is.

 Guy Lodge, Variety

onger on frippery than quippery: There’s a fatal shortage of zingers to supplement its exhausting zaniness.

Related Tags:

 

Critics

Great Reviews of Awful Movies by Roger Ebert

Posted on January 5, 2013 at 8:00 am

January is traditionally the worst month of the year for movies, as the studios take a break from releasing their big, ambitious, awards contenders.  That makes it a perfect time to read Roger Ebert’s series of books about the movies he, well, hated, hated, hated.  The third in his series of collections of reviews of movies that got no more than two stars (out of four) is, as always, smart, funny, and just plain delicious fun.  When the movies are good, Ebert is very, very good, but when they’re bad, he’s even better.

The newest one is A Horrible Experience of Unbearable Length:More Movies That Suck, featuring reviews of “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” (which gives this book its title) and “Your Highness.” The previous books are Your Movie Sucks and I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie.  I love Roger’s unabated passion for movies, and I love the way it inspires him to stay as angry at the bad ones as he is enthusiastic about the good ones.

Want to read about some good movies to enjoy while we wait for some better new releases? Try Ebert’s Roger Ebert’s Four-Star Reviews 1967-2007 or his The Great Movies and its sequels.  And of course, follow him on Twitter at @ebertchicago and read his award-winning blog.

Related Tags:

 

Books Critics
THE MOVIE MOM® is a registered trademark of Nell Minow. Use of the mark without express consent from Nell Minow constitutes trademark infringement and unfair competition in violation of federal and state laws. All material © Nell Minow 1995-2024, all rights reserved, and no use or republication is permitted without explicit permission. This site hosts Nell Minow’s Movie Mom® archive, with material that originally appeared on Yahoo! Movies, Beliefnet, and other sources. Much of her new material can be found at Rogerebert.com, Huffington Post, and WheretoWatch. Her books include The Movie Mom’s Guide to Family Movies and 101 Must-See Movie Moments, and she can be heard each week on radio stations across the country.

Website Designed by Max LaZebnik