All is forgiven for “Mortdecai,” Johnny Depp.
Doing a hilarious Donald Trump impression, Depp scores more laughs in his secret new online video, “Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal: The Movie,” than in his last several comedies.
The Funny or Die site, which produced the 50-minute spoof last year, successfully kept its existence a total secret until the site went live with it the day after Trump’s blowout victory in the Republican presidential primary in New Hampshire. Here are five great things about it:
Johnny Depp
With a mound of swoopy blondish hair and a Noo Yawk accent, Depp is almost unrecognizable as he makes grandiose gestures and explains his philosophy of life to a kid fan in Trump Tower on Trump’s 40th birthday in 1986.
Depp’s mix of bluster, cluelessness and anger is spot-on: At the end, he sputters, “F - - k you, f - - k foreigners, f - - k dogs, f - - k cats. F - - k those transforming robots with, whatever, they turn into cars. Which by the way I came up with first! I called ‘em Changey-Bots.”
The gratuitous nastiness
Trump is the Insult Comic Candidate. Why not unload on him? Trump talks about coveting the Taj Mahal casino: “Now this is a place I have dreamt about owning since before I had orange pubic hair.” He muses, “I want my daughter to grow up and be someone I would totally have sex with.” On his wedding day, he praises his own Trump-brand suit because “My junk looked uuuuuuge!” Minorities? “I love minorities! They’re exotic, they’re sensual. Especially the Asians.” Actually, all of this sounds like stuff Trump would actually say. Never mind.
The kind-of-surprisingly fact-based script
Former Onion scribe Joe Randazzo packs a lot of Trump’s actual 1980s history into the movie, noting how The Donald schemed to acquire the Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City from Merv Griffin; his ill-fated lawsuit against the NFL when he owned a team in the rival USFL; and how he tore down the old Bonwit Teller store on Fifth Avenue, destroying in the process the Art Deco friezes coveted by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in order to build Trump Tower. “I had always wanted to do two things on Fifth Avenue,” recalls Depp’s loony-but-accurate Trump. “Shoot someone in the middle of the street (and then watch them die) and build a skyscraper.” Trump’s architect (Jack McBrayer) worries about Trump’s plan to swathe the entire building in brass: “Mr. Trump, if you add any more, we could be in uncharted territories of classiness!”
The cameos
Ron Howard plays himself, explaining how he found the “lost video” Trump made about “The Art of the Deal” at a yard sale in Arizona (“I had to wrestle it from a woman named Ginny. Much stronger than she looked.”). Patton Oswalt does a priceless Merv Griffin and Henry Winkler pops up as three-term New York Mayor Ed Koch. Alfred Molina, Christopher Lloyd and Stephen Merchant also show up.
The ’80s vibe
The opening credits recall “Dynasty,” and Kenny Loggins sings the theme song over bitchin’ guitar riffs. There’s a joke about how the original videotape of Trump’s movie got lost in “The Cybill Shepherd blouse fire of 1989.” And a plot line comes right out of “Back to the Future,” when the President Trump of 2016 pops in for advice. (“Get @DonaldTrump on Twitter as soon as it’s invented. Otherwise you’ll be stuck with @RealDonaldTrump. Trust me.”) Alf pops up as the best man at Trump’s wedding. “You’re the only illegal alien I truly love!” says Trump.