Parents' Guide to The Professor and the Madman

Despite the fact that both the star/producer and the director have disavowed it, this isn't a bad film; it's beautifully shot and sensationally acted, and it tells a fascinating real-life story. It must be challenging to make something cerebral -- the quest to find and identify word origins -- into something exciting, so the initial focus of The Professor and the Madman is more on the enormity of the task. While teens have likely never thought about how the dictionary was created, most have faced moments of having to tackle an overwhelming assignment, and the film may set an example for them: Ask for help, divide it into smaller tasks, and conquer. It also may be useful to see that, while Murray's employers wanted him to take shortcuts so he'd move faster, he insisted on the work's integrity, thoroughness, and accuracy.

Perhaps that's where The Professor and the Madman went south: Director Farhad Sahinia (who removed his name from the credits) and star/producer Gibson weren't allowed to shoot additional scenes, and they insist that the movie is incomplete. We'll have to trust them on that, but what remains is solidly interesting. It's no easy feat to turn a mentally unstable man who shot and killed an innocent father of six into a sympathetic hero. Penn's vulnerable, enigmatic portrayal of Minor is focused in his vacant but pained eyes. Giving more depth to his humanity are the interactions with Murray and Natalie Dormer's Eliza Merrett. The story we're watching may be set in the past, but with mental illness on the rise (or at least increased diagnosis and awareness), the message that society shouldn't abandon or ridicule the afflicted couldn't be more timely.