The Bottom Line
Pros
- A fun romantic comedy
- Phenomenal cast, especially Walter Matthau's performance as Albert Einstein
- Entertaining physics discussions, especially among Einstein and his colleagues
Cons
- As a romantic comedy, it is fairly predictable.
Description
- Cast: Tim Robbins, Meg Ryan, Walter Matthau
Director: Fred Schepisi
Writer: Andy Breckman - 100 minutes, Paramount Pictures (1994)
- Genre: romantic comedy
Guide Review - I.Q.
In this 1994 romantic comedy, Ed Walters (Robbins), an auto mechanic, falls in love with the beautiful, intellectual Catherine Boyd (Ryan) who comes to his auto shop. While attempting to see her again, he discovers something amazing - Catherine is Albert Einstein's (Matthau) niece and a brilliant mathematician in her own right.Einstein and his colleagues, Kurt Godel, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Liebknecht, take an instant liking to Walters and decide to play cupid between the two. Unfortunately, Catherine is engaged to a prominent research psychologist (the "rat man," as Godel calls him, because he hooks up electrodes to the private parts of rats).
Since Catherine is unable to see past Walters' less intellectual background, the group attempts to impress her by faking a scientific discovery ... only to find themselves wrapped up in a scientific conspiracy where they must lie even to President Eisenhower to keep up the charade.
Do not expect revelations, either in storytelling style or scientific knowledge, from this film, but you can expect to be entertained by the engaging scientific characters. The science discussed is reasonable, but is not the focus of the film.
