"Much Scholarship Hath Made Them Mad."

Rating: 8/10 (14 January 2006)

This is a fairly good film and Johnny Depp is, as always, good in it. What got me to write any comment was some of the "supposed" goofs as reported here. The main one is about the surgeon "Ferral" being called "Doctor". We are informed that a surgeon would have then and would be now called "Mister" not "Doctor" in England. This is almost but not quiet correct. In PROPER British usage he WOULD, as a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons, be called Mister. In general and lay usage, however, he is very likely to be called "Doctor" even though he isn't one. Witness Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic novel THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES (1901) in which James Mortimer, MRCS is referred to as DOCTOR Mortimer pretty much throughout even though he himself tells Holmes "Mister, sir, Mister, a humble MRCS." This craze for finding so-called goofs gets out of hand, sometimes, and, as in this case, sometimes the goofs aren't true goofs at all.