Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
Writer/director: Wayne Roberts, Defiant Screen Entertainment.
Cast: Johnny Depp, Rosemarie DeWitt, Odessa Young, Zoey Deutch, Danny Huston, Ron Livingston.
Reactions will vary, but what would you do if you had just been given a veritable death sentence? The real-life crisis for towering academic Richard Brown is difficult to comprehend.
Three-time Oscar nominee Johnny Depp (Edward Scissorhands, Pirates of the Caribbean, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald) plays the title role and delivers a malevolently funny performance, as a world-weary professor who receives a life-changing diagnosis. That’s when he decides to make his final chapter the best one ever.
The earnest story is of how one man learns to live life to the fullest, when he’s faced with the end of his journey. Richard wants to live his last year to the fullest after deciding not to go in for treatment.
The college professor lives his life with reckless abandon after being diagnosed with a terminal illness. You could say he has a ‘biting sense of humour, a reckless streak and a touch of madness’. “He binges through every vice, rebels against authority and hurls insults at anyone who annoys him – giving him more pleasure than he’s had in years.”
Depp fits right in, playing a disruptive, stylishly unkempt character, who speaks indistinctly. On a slow reveal is the sadness behind his changeability.
Told in six gloomy chapters, Richard Says Goodbye Richard’s battle is on two fronts: one with adulterous wife (DeWitt) and lesbian daughter Olivia (Young); the second at school, he tries trying to blackmail the Dean into giving him a paid sabbatical.
Also known as The Professor, the movie co-stars Huston (Wonder Woman), DeWitt (La La Land) and Livingston (The Conjuring).
Name the 2018 film that starred Depp. If your answer is correct, you could win one of three DVDs of Richard Says Goodbye. Entries should be sent to [email protected] by Monday, 14 October 2019. Names of the winners will be announced in Frank Cassidy’s PS-sssst…! column on 15 October 2019.
