Johnny Depp’s comeback performance in Jeanne Du Barry ‘a disappointment’, say critics
Johnny Depp has made his comeback in Jeanne Du Barry, premiering at the Cannes Film Festival, but the critics aren’t keen.
It’s Depp’s first film in three years, and the first since his high profile legal case against ex-wife Amber Heard in their defamation trial.
Depp’s reputation was tarnished by the trial, but his team presumably hoped his performance as King Louis XV would be the first stepping stone back to building his reputation.
While many critics praised the actor’s French accent, the overall picture wasn’t so positive.
The Hollywood Reporter said Johnny Depp “offers a few early thrills and then mostly yawns, with Depp dishing out what feels like a total of a dozen lines in respectable French, while otherwise remaining mute.”
The Daily Mail call the whole thing “disappointingly bland” and The Telegraph called Depp’s “regal gravitas is nonexistent,” adding: “he only truly looks at home in the role during occasional bouts of clowning, which hardly help sell his casting as an inspired choice.”
The Evening Standard called the film “a right royal disappointment,” and Variety agreed, adding: “Depp’s the kind of player who delivers practically every performance with a wink, so it’s odd that even when his Louis is actually supposed to be winking (at Jeanne), the sparkle isn’t there.”
The Jeanne Du Barry plot centres on around a young woman from a working class background who manages to fraternise with the Palace of Versailles, rising her rank from impoverished seamstress to mistress of the King, played by Johnny Depp.
Read more: Bleak Expectations at the Criterion Theatre is the silliest West End show you’ve got to catch
Read more: Brokeback Mountain play, review: Where’s all the gay sex?!