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The Nutty Professor's Daughter:
Proof
9-21-05 "Knight Thoughts" film review
by Richard Knight, Jr.
Proof
9-21-05 "Knight Thoughts" film review
by Richard Knight, Jr.
The proof is not in the pudding or in the casting of gay icon in training Jake Gyllenhall
Proof is continued proof that movies about math geniuses should remain few and far between. Just beneath the film frame, one
can feel the actors treading the boards as the director struggles to open up the material, which resists being transplanted from its
stage origins.
Not that these aren’t interesting emotional questions at stake – and Gwyneth Paltrow (repeating her London stage performance) is
lovely and agonized in the leading role of the daughter of a late math genius (hammy Anthony Hopkins) who may or may have not
written a one of a kind math proof. Hope Davis, as her diffident sister who just wants to sell the family’s house and get on with her
life, is great in one of those roles that requires her to be a know it all bitch in the guise of compassion. Though it’s a role that actors
love to play, its not one that audiences are likely to reward.
Jake Gyllenhall, this year’s Jude Law, however, is so badly miscast that he throws any possibility of this equation adding up to
anything other than zero. Supposedly playing a self-described “math geek,” the impossibly pretty Gyllenhall uses powers of
persuasion on Paltrow to spirit the just discovered proof out of the prof’s home – and to possibly take credit for its discovery.
Long before the denouement I lost interest in the outcome of any of the moral questions raised by the play, um, movie, and
focused instead, on the lovely Chicago locations and the beautiful score by Stephen Warbeck. It’s all neatly wrapped up, math-style,
but it still didn’t add up for me.
can feel the actors treading the boards as the director struggles to open up the material, which resists being transplanted from its
stage origins.
Not that these aren’t interesting emotional questions at stake – and Gwyneth Paltrow (repeating her London stage performance) is
lovely and agonized in the leading role of the daughter of a late math genius (hammy Anthony Hopkins) who may or may have not
written a one of a kind math proof. Hope Davis, as her diffident sister who just wants to sell the family’s house and get on with her
life, is great in one of those roles that requires her to be a know it all bitch in the guise of compassion. Though it’s a role that actors
love to play, its not one that audiences are likely to reward.
Jake Gyllenhall, this year’s Jude Law, however, is so badly miscast that he throws any possibility of this equation adding up to
anything other than zero. Supposedly playing a self-described “math geek,” the impossibly pretty Gyllenhall uses powers of
persuasion on Paltrow to spirit the just discovered proof out of the prof’s home – and to possibly take credit for its discovery.
Long before the denouement I lost interest in the outcome of any of the moral questions raised by the play, um, movie, and
focused instead, on the lovely Chicago locations and the beautiful score by Stephen Warbeck. It’s all neatly wrapped up, math-style,
but it still didn’t add up for me.
