If no one else dares to say it, I will - Angelina Jolie can't act. She is a one-role wonder who won an Oscar for playing herself and nothing underscores this better than Lara Croft, The (godhelpus) Changeling and now The Tourist.
Why was Tourist even made? What was the story it had to tell that we have not been told a dozen times already? We knew from the opening scene who Johnny Depp was and we understand why Captain Sparrow could not turn the role down – who can refuse this woman whose fame is bigger than she is? Of course take Mr Pitt out of the picture and it would be halved but that's neither here nor there. The only thing The Tourist did was pay homage to Ms Jolie's admittedly mesmerising beauty. Her face is unsurpassable and her fashion exquisite. From the fur and gold accessories to the cinched-waist ensembles topped with the abundant hair extensions, we could have asked for nothing more – visually. But as when she moaned 'I want my son, I want my son' until we cringed with embarrassment in our seats during The Changeling, watch her move down Europe's hallowed streets as though a mannequin had come to life and you will simply shake your head in wonder. What was the director thinking? No spy would actually hip-sway down public roads with her nose in the air. And when she enters a ball, the world stops and stares as though Liz Taylor, Charlize Theron and Doutzen Kroes never existed.
But there is another reason to watch Tourist and that's Depp's continuing comic genius. Buongiorno, says the Italian receptionist and the foreign languages-impaired American says, Yes, yes, Bonjovi and hurriedly tries to say that men with 'pistoleros' were coming to get him, to which the receptionist replies, Sir, your Spanish is excellent. The Yankee doesn't know the difference, of course. The joke carries on when he tells an Italian cop, Gracias instead of Grazie and the cop says De Nada. I laughed till the tears rolled down my cheeks but alas, some were tears of pain that there are no men of courage out there who will simply say No to Ms Jolie's further skewering of the public sensibility through her so-called acting skills.
I'm sure she knows the truth, too, since she has now taken to directing.
