Johnny Depp’s comeback leaves critics cold in first “Ebenezer” reviews
Johnny Depp in ‘Ebenezer’Credit: Paramount PicturesKey points
Johnny Depp received a plethora of negative reviews for his turn as Scrooge in Ebenezer.
The film holds a 50 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Ebenezer is now playing in theaters.
Bah, humbug.
Johnny Depp‘s Ebenezer marks his first major studio film since his controversial defamation trial with ex-wife Amber Heard, and the movie has failed so far to fill critics with Christmas cheer.
The latest adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, directed by X filmmaker Ti West, currently holds a 50 percent approval rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes with 70 reviews and counting. Most of the positive-leaning reviews gave it a score around 6 out of 10, meaning that the vast majority of critics left the film underwhelmed. Ebenezer also received a less-than-stellar 47/100 score on the aggregator site Metacritic.
IndieWire‘s David Ehrlich called Depp’s performance “an advent calendar of empty affectations without a soul to anchor them, every shot full of face and bereft of feeling... His offscreen unsavoriness certainly doesn’t help, but there’s a more immediate problem when the lights go down, one that makes him a unique case among Hollywood’s tainted array of mega-star actors: He seems to have become very bad at acting.”
Consequence‘s Liz Shannon Miller opined that Depp’s version of Scrooge paled in comparison to A Muppet Christmas Carol. “Too bad Depp’s performance is a sad joke compared to, say, the great Michael Caine’s definitive take on the role; Caine was performing opposite Muppets, but Depp’s doing his best to act like one,” she wrote. Miller also suggested that Depp “utterly fails at capturing Ebenezer’s transition towards kindness; it’s just the same performance, with a bit more goofiness in the mix.”
TheWrap‘s Amelia Emberwing disliked Nathaniel Halpern’s screenplay for the film. “Its attempts at humor are all whiffs, leaving you laughing at the film in moments meant to play out in earnest,” she wrote. “But its greatest sin is reliance on second-screen dialogue that has zero faith that its audience will be looking up from their phones to see whatever it is that’s unfolding on screen.”
Johnny Depp in ‘Ebenezer’Credit: Jaap Buitendijk/Paramount Pictures
Vulture’s Alison Wilmore noted the overall film is “pretty good” aside from the performance of its lead actor. “Depp is also doing a tiresome variation on the mugging that’s become his primary approach to acting ever since the role of Captain Jack Sparrow vaulted him into Disney-franchise levels of fame — a vaguely comic, scenery-chewing mode that doesn’t fit in with the rest of the movie,” she wrote. “While the rest of Ebenezer leans toward the horror aspect of Charles Dickens’ novella, Depp appears to think he’s starring in a family comedy.
Similarly, RogerEbert.com‘s Matt Zoller-Seitz said that the film is “skillfully done” with “retro-classical style.” However, he believes that Depp’s “standard Marlon-Brando-in-latex bag of tricks is all wrong for a work of such delicacy, almost like mischievous sabotage of a film that doesn’t deserve such disrespect.”
On the more positive end of the spectrum, Variety’s Guy Lodge wrote that Depp “makes for a perfectly solid, by-the-book Scrooge — with occasional moments of ripe inspiration in his line readings,” but also noted the movie is “too frightening for many children and too old hat for many adults.”
And THR’s Frank Scheck wrote that although the film “doesn’t break any new ground, other than possibly being the first version of the story not really suitable for young children, it fulfills its ostensible goal of restoring the actor to A-list status.” Scheck adds that Depp’s “charisma and star power eventually come through.”
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Ebenezer also stars Ian McKellen, Andrea Riseborough, Tramell Tillman, Rupert Grint, Sam Claflin, and Daisy Ridley. The film is now playing in theaters.
Source: Entertainment
