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‘Jeanne du Barry’ Reviews Roast Johnny Depp’s Big Screen Comeback

One said the actor’s “regal gravitas is nonexistent.”

Johnny Depp may have received a seven-minute standing ovation at the Cannes screening of his new film Jeanne Du Barry on Tuesday, but some of the reviewers in the audience apparently weren’t quite so taken with it. The Telegraph called the movie about French king Louis XV and his mistress a “stale and [drafty] period piece,” adding that Depp “may be the actor least suited—after Hulk Hogan—to playing an ancien régime monarch.” Hollywood Reporter critic Jordan Mintzer said the decision to cast 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.” London’s Evening Standard said the film was a “disappointment” but that it isn’t “dire,” as Cannes openers have been in the past. It’s not all bad news for Depp, though, with The Guardian calling his casting “spectacular” and The Times saying he “makes it work, as if playing someone whose uneven accent is just part of his quirky royal accoutrements.” The film’s showing was criticized by supporters of Depp’s ex-wife, Amber Heard, in a #CannesYouNot campaign highlighting allegations of abuse against the actor.

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Dan Ladden-HallBreaking News Editor

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