I had high hopes for this. Johnny Depp, Samantha Morton, John Malkovich, lots of good things said at various film festivals... but the lack of a widespread release should have been a hint. This film isn't very good at all.<br /><br />It will mark me as a philistine to say so but I thought about 7/8 of the film was pretentious rubbish. Much of the dialogue was authentically 17th century, but it was hard to listen to because the sound mix was bad, and the print was so grainy it looked like a pirate DVD. Perhaps not being able to clearly see or hear the goings-on was intentional, but the lack of plot didn't give us much else to concentrate on. There was lots of artful focusing and un-focusing which just appeared as though the cameraman didn't know what he was doing. But most obvious of all was the fact that it was all pretty boring and everyone was acting their little socks off in it to make it "worthy". There are several scenes between Depp and Morton where he coaches her to be a better actress. These scenes drag terribly, they are unmoving and long-winded and slow the film to a virtual halt.<br /><br />I will give credit where it's due and say that Johnny Depp in a long curly wig, eyeliner and cocked hat was worth seeing. The servant character was excellent. And to be fair the whole boring shebang massively improved about 20 minutes before the end. At this point, the Earl gets syphilis, becomes horribly disfigured, loses control of his bladder and has to start wearing a strap-on metal nose when his real nose rots away. He also gives a jolly rousing speech in the House of Lords which makes us actually care about him for the first time in the film. If the whole thing had been anything like as engaging as the last 20 minutes it would have been an excellent film. As it is, our Christmas and Thanksgiving turkey has been served up early.<br /><br />Still, worth going to see if only to witness John Malkovich's 'English' accent. You'd think he'd know better after starring alongside Ted Theodore Logan in Dangerous Liaisons, but no.