Johnny Depp was and still is one of the biggest stars in cinema. In a career spanning four decades, he’s appeared in dozens of films, which altogether grossed more than $10 billion at the worldwide box office. During the 2010s, he’s become one of the highest-paid actors in the world, and his unique brand of acting has led to several critically praised performances.
Occasionally, however, he appears in a film that doesn’t bode as well with critics as most, and those infrequent slipups are what we’ll be focusing on today, as we use IMDb’s user rating system to count down his 10 worst films of the 2010s.
Dark Shadows (2012) (6.2)
![The 10 Worst Johnny Depp Roles Of The Decade (According To IMDb)](https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Depp-in-Dark-Shadows-directed-by-Tim-Burton.jpg)
This gothic soap opera adaptation, directed by Tim Burton and released in 2012, stars Depp as a powerful eighteenth-century playboy who is cursed to eternal life as a vampire after rejecting a flirtatious servant (Eva Green) who is actually a witch in disguise.
He is buried alive, unable to escape from his tomb – until he is freed, in the 1970s, by a construction crew; becoming an unwilling proponent of the “character in an unfamiliar time period” trope. The film did receive some praise for its visuals and humor, but both professional and audience critics had problems with the (never fully-formed) story and the passionless acting.
Lucky Them (2013) (6.1)
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In the 2013 drama film Lucky Them, Ellie (Toni Collette), a depressed music critic, is assigned by her dying newspaper to write a piece about her lifelong friend Matthew (Depp), who disappeared nearly 10 years ago and who many believe to have killed himself.
Doing research for her article, she undergoes an emotional transformation as she is forced to relive the past. Several outlets gave the film positive reviews, including Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, but others considered the film mediocre, and one of the least notable in Depp’s extensive filmography.
The Tourist (2010) (6.0)
![Depp alongside Jolie in The Tourist](https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Depp-alongside-Jolie-in-The-Tourist.jpg)
Depp’s 2010 thriller The Tourist follows Frank (Depp), a seemingly average math teacher from Wisconsin, who runs into Elise (Angelina Jolie), the wife of a prolific thief being hunted by several different groups, on a trip to Europe.
Little does he know Elise is trying to pass him off as her embezzling beau in what becomes a dangerous and deadly adventure filled with labyrinthine twists and turns. The Tourist received negative reviews from critics and audiences, who condemned the plot and tone and accused Jolie and Depp of having little chemistry.
Into the Woods (2014) (5.9)
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In this 2014 musical amalgamation of fairy tales, produced by Walt Disney Pictures, a baker (James Corden) and his wife (Emily Blunt) are forced to find the items that will grant beauty to their neighbor, a witch (Meryl Streep) who has placed a curse on them after discovering the baker robbing her garden.
Over the course of their quest, they come in contact with a smattering of fairy-tale legends, including Cinderella, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, and the Big Bad Wolf (Depp). The film received mixed-to-negative reviews, drawing praise for its musical performances but criticism for its action and tone.
Mortdecai (2015) (5.5)
![Johnny Depp as an immature and shady art dealer in Mortdecai](https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Johnny-Depp-as-an-immature-and-shady-art-dealer-in-Mortdecai.jpg)
In this 2015 action comedy film, Depp plays Lord Charlie Mortdecai, an immoral art dealer who is hired by his friend, an MI5 investigator, to track down a rare painting recently stolen in an elaborate and professional theft.
However, several high-profile criminals are set on retrieving the painting as well, believing it to point to the location of a bonanza of Nazi gold. The film received an extreme critical lambasting for its plot, acting, and humor, and although general audiences were slightly more forgiving of the film, many still consider it one of the worst films of 2015.
Tusk (2014) (5.3)
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This 2014 comedy/horror film follows Wallace Bryton (Justin Long), who runs a podcast dedicated to dissertating embarrassing viral videos. When his plans to interview a viral video star in Canada are unexpectedly cut short, he instead discovers Howard, an eccentric wheelchair-bound seafarer who tells Wallace a story of being rescued from a shipwreck by a walrus, who Howard nicknamed “Mr. Tusk” – but his seemingly innocent story conceals a darker intent to convert Wallace into a horrifying replica of his marine savior, as he’s done with others in the past.
Depp plays Guy LaPointe, an investigator who’s been hunting Howard for years, determined to finally catch the elusive psychopath. Tusk received mixed reviews, criticizing its story and characters, and became a box office bomb.
Sherlock Gnomes (2018) (5.1)
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In this 2018 animated film, a sequel to 2011’s Gnomeo and Juliet, Depp is the voice of Sherlock Gnomes, a dapper British detective who must team up with everyday garden gnomes Gnomeo and Juliet after their families are kidnapped by Sherlock’s elusive nemesis, fiendish villain and renegade pie mascot Moriarty.
The film received hugely negative reviews from both critics and audiences, being attacked for its plot, characters, story, and tone, with the Rotten Tomatoes critical consensus stating that the real mystery in play is “the reason of [the film’s] own existence.”
London Fields (2018) (4.3)
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Johnny Depp only has a cameo in 2018’s book-to-screen adaptation London Fields, so it can be argued that he’s not wholly responsible for its critical failure.
The film, which follows a woman with psychic powers who has a premonition of her own murder and thus begins a twisted relationship with three men to discover which of them will be her killer, received almost entirely negative reviews from critics, being described by The New York Times as “horrendous” and garnering disapproval from nearly every major review outlet for its acting, story, and characters.
Yoga Hosers (2016) (4.3)
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In this 2016 horror comedy and Tusk spinoff, Depp once again plays Guy Lapointe, the aging investigator responsible for tracking down bizarre killers – this time, teaming up with two teenage yoga aficionados to defeat an army of one-foot-tall Nazi assassins in the form of bratwurst sausages.
This convoluted premise was just one of the many problems critics found with the perplexing horror film: the acting, action, humor, and story were all noted as low points, and even general audiences don’t seem ready to give this confusing creation a break, ranking it as one of the worst films of Depp’s career.
Jack and Jill (2011) (3.3)
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This 2011 Adam Sandler “comedy” has attracted so much negative reception from critics and audiences that it’s basically just become an in-joke among cinephiles at this point. It follows successful advertising executive Jack (Sandler) as his attention-seeking sister Jill (also played by Sandler) comes to visit for Thanksgiving, with mayhem and misadventure in tow.
Depp, thankfully, only cameos in the film, as do many other actors and actresses with successful careers but apparently poor decision-making skills. This is easily the worst film Depp appeared in this decade, if not the worst film of this decade.