The Professor

Depp, sporting a distractingly foppish, unfurling-flag hairdo, commits to his character's tricky balancing act but over-relies on his signature rakishness to fully convince.

Poof! No doubt this movie will disappear quickly before our very eyes.

The movie frequently makes no sense from a purely human perspective... and it becomes increasingly annoying as the story rolls on.

[The Professor] is more subservient to feel-good cliches than its too-cool-for-school veneer indicates.

Though Roberts' screenplay draws attention to its structure with frequent chapter headings, it plays like a work that has been victimized by too many editors, each trying to achieve something different.

Depp's turbocharged archness is basically the whole show. The actor appears as out of whits to give as the man he's playing, with little interest in enunciating clearly or hiding his self-regard.

It's American Beauty meets Dead Poets Society given a terminal-disease twist, and while not as scathing nor as inspirational as those films, The Professor happily mines laughs from the darkest of places.

Johnny Depp finds some emotional depth amid the eccentricities, but this muddled character study about a dying man's final days can't match his efforts.

An off-season ditty for Johnny Depp, this short story of a short life gives Depp the time to do a short performance.

None of the relationships ... register as more than surface level drivel.