Big day for race fans kids! Gwenneth has to figure out how to act like a genius that is humble, absolutely gorgeous but not worthy of any praise, kinda like downplaying how stunning beautiful you are on screen and be coquetish, clueless and alarmingly charming. Do you need an advanced degree in Physics or Chemistry to appreciate the spectacular fireworks that unfold in the genius that is Anthony Hopkins? No sirree, all you have to do is suspend your belief that true brilliance is an aberration fraught with instability, self adulation and insanity and you're halfway home. Hard to keep count of all the hotties in the Math department, well maybe the Computer Science geeks could eek out a dashing formidable run for the money? Those of us who crave real conversation and a spark of life among the shadows will once again fall into despair believing no one in Hollywood will ever serve to educate, inspire, let alone entertain those whoe have a titch more than a room temp IQ. But for those of us who comprehend that Math is theee language of love will continue to foray for those minute details, subtle hints and secret code words to elucidate a modicum of spark, ignition and fire! I look forward to the stage play that hones it all in for our conspicous consumption and well deserved applause. I could barely finish this film it was too cooked, brittle, albeit more of a showcase for known talent. And who deals with Differential Equation concepts in Grad School, sheesh that's thrid grade material!

Getting together a talented cast (Gyllenhaal and the ageless Anthony Hopkins) to create such an insipid and boring movie... what a waste ! And to think that the scenario is adapted from a play, one doesn't want to imagine what it must be like. The script clearly lacks depth, there is not much going on with the characters who are dreadfully superficial and under-exploited. The lines are robotic, the actors are badly directed, the mise-en-scène is flat and the cheap pseudo intellectualism and melodramaticism oozing from this scenario are cringe-worthy. At the end you just feel you've been going in circles and lost 1h30 watching this completely uninteresting movie.

Proof" (2005) is the last in an unofficial trilogy of American films about mathematicians, following on from "Good Will Hunting" (1997), and "A Beautiful Mind" (2001). The central characters are Robert Llewellyn, a distinguished British-born mathematician at the University of Chicago, and his daughter Catherine. Robert is dead when the film opens, but we see him several times in flashback and once as a ghost. We learn that as a young man Robert was regarded as a mathematical genius but suffered from mental illness towards the end of his life. Catherine is, like her father, an academic mathematician. She may have inherited his intellectual gifts, however, but there is also an implication that she may also have inherited his mental instability; certainly her behaviour is often neurotic and irrational. The film revolves around the possibility that, despite his mental problems, Robert might have produced important work during his latter years. He has left a vast quantity of notebooks which Catherine and her boyfriend Hal, a former graduate student of Robert's, assiduously search through. Another important character is Catherine's older sister Claire, an orderly, fussy New York housewife with little interest in mathematics or any intellectual pursuits. The word "Proof" is here used both in its technical mathematical sense and in its everyday sense of "evidence". The crux of the story comes when Hal comes across a notebook containing a mathematical proof which, if valid, would be of immense significance. The question arises of whether this proof is indeed Robert's own work or whether Catherine actually wrote it herself- and if she did, can she prove it? The exact nature of the proof- something to do with prime numbers- is never revealed, but this does not really matter as pure mathematics is not really a subject which can be dramatised on the screen. Gwyneth Paltrow, in Britain at least, has something of the reputation of an eccentric luvvie, with her idiosyncratic language (such as describing her marital break-up as "conscious uncoupling"- or was it "unconscious coupling"), her advocacy of faddish diets and, of course, her special Oscar for Most Emotionally Incontinent Acceptance Speech Ever. Even eccentric luvvies, however, can occasionally rise above their own eccentricity, and while too many of Gwyneth's films have fallen firmly into the "I did it because I needed the money" category, she can occasionally come up with something special, as in "Emma", "Sliding Doors", "Sylvia" and again here. Her Catherine is a strange young woman, but someone we can recognise as human and sympathise with. Coming up with something special is something which Anthony Hopkins does on a regular rather than an occasional basis, and his performance as Robert is well up to his usual high standards. I also liked Jake Gyllenhaal as Hal. The film was based on a theatrical play with only four characters. The director makes some attempt to open the subject up and a few bit-part characters are introduced, but "Proof", dominated more by talk than by action, still betrays its origins on the stage. A film like this, based around a theme which the great majority of the population (myself included) will find very abstruse, could have become intolerably boring; that it does not is largely due to some fine acting. 6/10

Hi I've read a lot of the reviews and i can see why most people like this film. its story area may have been touched on in a beautiful mind and good will hunting, but it takes a different slant on it. AnthonyHopkins is a maths genius but becomes mentally unwell and looses hispowers mathematically. He has two daughters the youngest of which is Gwyneth Paltrow who stays behind to look after him. This costs her and she becomes trapped by him though they connect mentally through mathematics. After his death the elder sister comes back: there is agood take on mental health here because she is very controlling and undermining but would see herself as well strong and here to look afterher sister. The other main character play by Jake G. is a ray of sunshine to me (some have found in unrealistic in their reviews) and the scene is set for a well acted film with a good script...