By Peter Covino

Entertainment Editor

Johnny Depp is supposed to be “Joe Average” in The Tourist, a film about an American guy on vacation who  becomes mixed up in murders, mystery and intrigue. But Depp isn’t average in this film — he is much closer to boring.

After too many roles as a pirate, Mad Hatter, crazed barber or an eccentric chocolate mogul, it looked like it would be good to see Depp in a role that didn’t require a ton of makeup and goofy accent.

Alas, maybe he should have just stuck with the makeup.

Depp co-stars with Angelina Jolie, who has many men hot on her tail — Paris police, Scotland Yard and more. She plays the beautiful (what else) Elise, a woman who has had a romantic entanglement with a shady character in Europe. While in Paris she receives a letter from her lover boy (the assorted police guys are actually after him) to hop a train and begin an encounter with a man on the train who looks similar to himself. Hello, Johnny! She meets Frank (Depp), has dinner with him and soon all guys (including the bad guys) are convinced this is the man they are after because supposedly he has spent millions on cosmetic surgery to change his appearance.

The game of cat-and-mouse is very much like Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, where Cary Grant  is being sought by cops and bad guys in a case of mistaken identity. Grant even meets a women of mystery and intrigue (played by Eva Marie Saint) on a train.

While the stories have some basis for comparison,  director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (no, I am not kidding, even though his name sounds like something from a Mel Brooks movie)  certainly is no Hitchcock.

The only thing memorable in 90 minutes of The Tourist are the Paris and Venice locales. But just about anyone with a digital camera can return from Paris and Rome with some nice tourist photography.

Everything else in The Tourist seems second rate but the cast. The James Bond kind of scenario is aided by former Mr. Bond Timothy Dalton, a Scotland Yard guy, and Paul Bettany his obsessed inspector determined to see the real bad guy (he knows it isn’t our Joe Average American) put behind bars.

If you like picture card perfect settings and Jolie strutting around in a number of high fashion ensembles, there are worse ways to spend an evening than with The Tourist.

Critic's rating C

Rated PG-13