The film is adapted from the novel series Mortdecai (specifically its 1972 first installment Don't Point that Thing at Me) written by Kyril Bonfiglioli.

It stars Johnny Depp in the title role and features Gwyneth Paltrow, Ewan McGregor, Olivia Munn, Paul Bettany and Jeff Goldblum.

At the same time in Oxford, a painting by Francisco Goya becomes the target of an elaborate theft, resulting in the murder of an art restorer.

After Mortdecai arrives in Los Angeles, Krampf shows him that the Goya was smuggled into the US in the Rolls after it had been stolen from Strago and stashed there.

The painting is revealed to be another fake, and Romanov plots his revenge whilst his thugs begin to torture Sir Graham.

[10] The Goya painting is a pastiche or modern version of the 1805 Portrait of the Marchioness of Santa Cruz (Madrid, Prado Museum).

A promotional tie-in for the film was done by The Art of Shaving, whose store windows showed posters of Depp displaying their razors with the slogan "Handsome Doesn't Just Happen".

The second trailer was released on November 12 and was attached to Dumb and Dumber To, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1, Horrible Bosses 2, Top Five, and The Gambler.

The site's critical consensus reads: "Aggressively strange and willfully unfunny, the misguided Mortdecai sounds a frightfully low note in Johnny Depp's post-Pirates filmography".

[18] On Twitter, Robbie Collin of The Daily Telegraph characterised the film as "The Crap Budapest Hotel", elaborating in his review: "Mortdecai: mort de cinéma, more like".

[21] Later, in February 2022, director David Koepp took partial blame for the films' failure: "I only directed something someone else wrote once and it was a misbegotten adventure from the beginning, as much my fault as anybody else’s.