Johnny Depp names the greatest comedy actor of all time: “The king”
Comedy doesn’t come easily for every actor, and while some of his most popular and celebrated movies have their moments of mirth, it’s never been the strongest tool Johnny Depp has at his disposal.
Pirates of the Caribbean‘s Jack Sparrow is obviously a scene-stealer, more so in the first film than any of the others, after he began to overstay his welcome a little bit, and the eccentric swashbuckler is frequently very funny, but for every comedic high point that Depp delivers, a low is never too far behind.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is as jet-black as they come, and it’s great, but his spin on Willy Wonka in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory split opinion down the middle. He was solid as the protagonist of Gore Verbinski’s animated Rango, but The Rum Diary and Dark Shadows balanced the scales.
The Hollywood exile, who seems to be making a concerted attempt to manoeuvre himself back into the mainstream after spending years in exile, facilitated by one of the most notorious falls from grace in recent memory, would be much better off if he avoided aiming for the funny bone.
Sticking to what you’re good at applies to everyone in all walks of life, and based on Depp’s most recent attempt at seeking yuks from an audience, there’s a high chance he could end up back out on his arse in no time. It probably doesn’t need explaining, but if you want to make a comeback, don’t make shit films.
In 2015, the three-time Academy Award nominee hammered another nail into the coffin of his leading man status with the horrendous Mortdecai, a star-studded and self-indulgent disaster that paid him a reported $10million to mug his way through an aggressively unfunny caper that deservedly got him on the shortlist for ‘Worst Actor’ at the Razzies.
If you were unlucky enough to see it, and we can only offer our deepest condolences if you were, then you’d have been well within your rights to wonder why Depp decided to approach the title character as a bargain basement Peter Sellers knockoff. As it turns out, he had his reasons for aping one of the best ever.
“Peter Sellers, you know, having played Clouseau, and turning that bumbling character into a beloved icon, is no small feat. That’s major,” Depp reflected. “So, yeah, Sellers is probably the king of that sort of caper.” That’s a widely held and accepted belief, the downside being that the late Pink Panther frontman was effectively to blame for Depp thinking he could do something similar in Mortdecai.
Based on the critical and commercial reception to the film, which tanked at the box office and was ripped apart for being so aggressively terrible, with even director David Koepp calling it “a misbegotten adventure from the beginning,” hopefully it’s the last time he tries to channel his pick for the finest comic actor of them all.
