London, 1872. James Murray (Mel Gibson) has just been handed the vast task of documenting the entire English language for the Oxford English Dictionary and in an effort to cut years off of the process he has the controversial idea of democratising the process. In asking the public to submit words and their sources in order to speed up the process he finds an unlikely friend and ally in one of the most prolific donors, a convicted murderer. Dr. William Minor (Sean Penn) was a Captain in the US Army, but haunted by a man he literally branded as a deserter he is languishing in prison losing his mind.

The Professor And The Madman is a film that you could spend hours discussing thanks to its subject matter, the stories of its difficult creative process and its controversial stars. It should be an interesting film as well, but unfortunately it is a mess.

The subject matter is compelling. Dr. William Minor is an interesting character. Haunted by war, clearly losing his mind and tortured by antiquated medical techniques. Professor James Murray is equally interesting. Not seen as good enough by the Oxford establishment despite his credentials he has to prove himself constantly and is committed enough to move his entire family to take on his dream job. The two form an unlikely friendship to the backdrop of this monumental task against insurmountable odds. This should be of great interest but the film fails at every turn. It seems unfocused and jumps jarringly around in terms of what it wants to talk about. Initially it is the difficulty of the dictionary, then it is an odd relationship between Minor and the wife of the man he murdered (Natalie Dormer), then it is about medical practices we would now consider crazy. Add in the fact that clearly everyone here thinks they are on to an Oscar winning worthy film and the histrionic acting on display (Penn is the winner here) just mires the film in smirk inducing ridiculousness.

In fact the cast on display is quite something, especially given how little most of them are given to do. Eddie Marsan is a kindly prison guard, Natalie Dormer has a quite frankly bonkers role as widowed love interest, Steve Coogan is a man who recognises and champions Murray’s talents, Jennifer Ehle has nothing to do as the dutiful wife of Murray, Stephen Dillane is the slightly evil Doctor treating Minor, Ioan Gruffeld and Jeremy Irvine are researchers for the dictionary. Whilst finally Laurence Fox is on truly awful form in a role that may as well be credited as ‘moustache twirling villian’.

Creatively the film struggled to find its way into the open. Now streaming on Amazon but actually filmed in 2016 it has been mired in lawsuits for some time. Gibson sued Voltage Pictures over control of the film and the fact that they refused to provide budget for filming to take place at Oxford University. The Writer and Director, Farhad Safinia was suitably disgruntled with the final product not being his vision and changed his credit to the pseudonym P.B. Shemran.

Add on top of this filming controversy the fact that as well as Gibson and Penn the film features Laurence Fox and you could have a whole discussion about separating art from those who created it. But not one that I want to go into here, aside from saying that as talented as Gibson is I never cease to be amazed at how he is allowed so much leeway in Hollywood.

Ultimately the fact that I have enjoyed writing about this film more than I did watching it really sums up my opinion. At 124 minutes long even I struggle to recommend this as a curate’s egg. You have been warned.