By Jeff Hartke, January 20, 2006

On the face of it, The Libertine (LIBTN) has a lot going for it. After all, it’s the story of a decadent aristocratic poet who drank hard, lived hard, loved hard and died from the effort. With what seemed to be perfect casting, Johnny Depp (JDEPP) stars as the title character with a top notch supporting cast. Yet for all its promise, the end result is a rambling, pretentious effort, due largely to an oddly irritable performance by Depp.

There is a class of celebrity whose fame is based more on the theatre of their lives than on the quality of their work. Let’s face facts – Madonna (MADON) and her personal life have been fun to watch, but how many people are still interested in Desperately Seeking Susan? Her acting and singing career never lived up to her erotic exploits, or her succession of image remakes. John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester and the title character of The Libertine, had a similar celebrity.


Wilmot had the good fortune to be born during the Restoration, that period when the English, having growing bored with the long-nosed fundamentalism of the Puritans, decided to party for a while. Even by the standards of the day Wilmot went a bit overboard, kidnapping an heiress (whom he later married), becoming an alcoholic and contracting syphilis, from which he died at age 33. He dabbled in the stage and wrote poetry, but his real claim to fame was earned on his deathbed. There he converted to the Church of England, whose preachers were so pleased by the reclamation of his soul that they made him a regular Sunday topic for the next 200 years.

You can see why John Malkovich (JMALK) and Depp would be drawn to the story. Here was a rebel who flaunted his bad boy image in the face of religious intolerance, who coupled a love of words with a love of lusty living. There's high-flown dialogue, passion, poetry, and depravity - it sounds like a good third date movie, if you know what I mean. Building on this anticipation is a strong opening monologue. Depp luridly promises the audience that, despite delivering a heaping portion of the 17th century equivalent of sex, drugs and rock 'n roll, they will not like his character.

He’s correct, but for all the wrong reasons. Depp plays Wilmot as a deeply brooding brat of a man, whose upper class sense of entitlement is combined with the touchiness of the adolescent. At every turn Depp’s Wilmot lashes out at all the people in his life who love and respect him. He wages psychological war against his wife, played by Rosamund Pike (RPIKE), abuses his patron Charles II (Malkovich), and behaves nastily towards just about everyone he comes in contact with. There is absolutely nothing revealed about his character to show exactly why all these people are willing to put up with his self-absorbed guff. He is not likeable, he shows no talent, he has no sex appeal, and he bumbles from one tabloid-worthy event to another. He is, without a doubt, 1677's "Upper Class Twit of the Year."


To be sure, there are moments of brilliantly crafted dialogue that seem to only come from English stage productions, most notably when Wilmot is coaching his protégé Elizabeth Barry, played competently by Samantha Morton (SMORT). Those scenes where John Malkovich appears are like a cool breeze of fresh air. His easy mastery of his character is a decided contrast to Depp's twitchy, irritated role - there is little doubt as to who gives the better performance.

But these are just brief interludes in the ploddingly disagreeable production. I don’t know if its Stephen Jeffrey’s writing or Lawrence Dunmore’s direction, but the characters sure don’t seem to be having fun. Isn’t the whole point of debauchery to have a really good time? What's the point in risking eternal damnation if its going to be such a dreadful bore? More to the point, why would we want to see a movie where everyone drags themselves around in misery?

"I gave you a stage on which to dazzle the world!" says Charles II to Wilmot, "and you return a play about knobbery." So we might say to Lawrence Dunmore about this disappointing film.

The Libertine re-enters theaters on January 27.