A Beautiful Mind 2001
I know it’s been a while since this has been out. And I will tell you that I saw this on a plane so I missed a few parts when the flight attendant’s drink cart was in the way . . . I knew a few things about the movie going in plus I had heard all the glowing reviews and knew it got Best Picture. Still it was never a movie I wanted to see a whole lot. I really didn’t like Russell Crowe in the tobacco movie where he does a fake American accent and I sure wasn’t looking forward to him massacring a southern accent. But I thought I ought to see it and we were still 3 hours from Miami, so what the heck.
I knew I would be disappointed and I was. Not just with Russell Crowe who I thought was adequate though not great (really glad he didn’t get the Oscar for this), but also with the story. The problem with these true-life stories is they only get made if the true-life story reads like a bad movie. I thought the depth of this guys mental problems was impressive. I can see how if you had no idea that was coming you could be blown away, but I already knew most of it (though not all of it). The rest of it amounted to anguish and feeling sorry for the guy. But the guy was kind of jerk early in the movie so I never really warmed up to him. And I guess the treatment must have severely affected him because they don’t talk about him ever doing any more useful research. So they tried to tack on this happy ending, but I was thinking they were making it look a lot sweeter than the true situation. It’s nice that he was able to continue to teach, but, honestly, most universities would pay a Nobel prize winner to watch TV all day as long as they could say they had him on staff.
Still, it was a nice movie and, over the cheap headphones, seemed to be well-acted. The idea of taking things from the viewpoint of someone who sometimes sees things that aren’t there was great, but that seems to be the only thing that separates this movie from so many other similar ones.
I would give this movie a C, but because it had to have been better in a real theater or even on video I’ll add some bonus points and give it a B-.
Owned on: Blu-ray