Johnny Depp is an American original

Too delicate to live
These characters often seem too delicate to live. They tend to be passive, particularly with women. His Edward is frozen before Winona Ryder’s beauty, his Gilbert a boy-toy to Mary Steenburgen. In the same film it’s Juliette Lewis who finally makes the first move. Even Depp’s Don Juan forces himself on no one. “I give women pleasure, if they desire,” he says. That’s why his Roux, the gypsy in “Chocolat” (2000), comes as something of a shock. He actually flirts with Juliette Binoche’s Vianne. He’s actually bold. As she walks away, he checks her out. “I’ll come around sometime,” he says, grinning, “get that squeak out of your door.” The grin broadens. Women everywhere fanned themselves.

His characters are sometimes so reserved that they risk being non-entities. “Johnny played the part straight and flat,” Roman Polanski says of Depp’s Dean Corso in “The Ninth Gate. “An interesting contrast with all those strange and funny secondary characters.” As a result Depp often found himself upstaged: by Leonardo DiCaprio’s mentally-handicapped kid brother in “Gilbert Grape,” by Al Pacino’s sad mobster in “Donnie Brasco,” by Benicio del Toro’s whacked-out lawyer in “Fear and Loathing.” It was his co-stars who got the Oscar noms: Leo for “Gilbert,” Martin Landau for “Ed Wood,” Juliette Binoche and Judi Dench in “Chocolat.”

Now he’s doing the upstaging; now he’s getting the Oscar noms. Maybe it helps that he’s not the central character. Maybe having the focus elsewhere frees him in some way. “Pirates” is a love story between Keira Knightly and Orlando Bloom, “Once Upon a Time in Mexico” is a revenge story for Antonio Banderas. Depp’s character in both films is the wild card who sets everything in motion. Outrageous, unpredictable, funny: the guy we remember. The guy who makes watching the movie worthwhile. You gotta love an undercover CIA agent who wears a T-shirt that says “CIA” to a bullfight.

Many of his early movies were indies, and none made much money. 1990’s “Edward Scissorhands” topped $50 million, a number a Johnny Depp movie wouldn’t see again until 1999’s “Sleepy Hollow” (which topped $100 million). Most floundered below $25 million. Going mainstream didn’t help. The action film “Nick of Time” (1995) made just $8 million. The sci-fi thriller, “The Astronaut’s Wife” (1999), made just $10 million. Both films had the additional problem of sucking.

Indeed, the pleasant surprise of watching the early Johnny Depp movies again is how many of them hold up. “Cry-Baby” is a rock ’n’ roll gas, “Edward Scissorhands” is a touching metaphor for hurting those we love, “Gilbert Grape” a bittersweet battle between too-little freedom and too-much responsibility. Want a short valentine full of beautiful language? “Don Juan DeMarco.” A paean to bad taste over corporate taste? “Ed Wood.” A gritty drama on loyalty which warns — like Kurt Vonnegut in “Mother Night” — to be careful what you pretend to be, because you are what you pretend to be? “Donnie Brasco.”

More recent films are good but lack something. “Fear and Loathing” is a helluva trip, but it’s someone else’s trip, and people on drugs rarely make interesting protagonists. The ending to “The Ninth Gate” is thin. “Blow,” already derivative of “Goodfellas,” suffers from the second-half passivity of Depp’s initial Boston tough guy. “Once Upon a Time” is too much style and not enough substance. “Secret Window” is too easy to figure out.

Depp is great in all of them.

Out of his tree
“Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” is Depp’s first sequel, and, like most sequels, it’s bigger, louder and longer than the first. The set pieces are overwhelming. Everything is broader, including the comedy. That might not be a good thing.

Maybe the first film worked so well because Capt. Jack was written as a non-comic character and found himself in non-comic situations. Depp’s tottering performance simply made it all funny. Now that the writers know what they got, they’ve stuck him in comic situations. Being chased by cannibals, for example. Although, I have to admit, Capt. Jack’s head-back, feet-first running style, so reminiscent of a cartoon, is worth the price of admission.

He’s still tippled, of course. He’s still touched. Johnny Depp is still out of his tree, but now it’s his tree.

Erik Lundegaard can be reached at:

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