Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Don't Believe the Hype

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

I almost wish they could re-title "Proof" to "Gwyneth Paltrow's Acting Abilities," because that's what Proof has going for it: Gwyneth Paltrow's tour de force portrayal of a woman caught between the lines of brilliance and insanity. It's the best performance I've ever seen dealing with grief. She has a few times in the first Act she crosses the line and becomes melodramatic, but Act Two and Three prove Paltrow's work to be a hurricane of a performance. I've seen Proof twice, I must say the overall quality of the film dropped the second time around. At times Proof is misdirected and strays into melodrama, therefore loses connection with the viewer. But the director has a handle on many of the painfully emotional scenes. It does display some terrific edited sequences, the performances from Anthony Hopkins and Jake Gyllenhaal are air-tight, and the script is tailored in compelling drama and mystery. Paltrow's emotionally draining performance is reason enough to see it. Rating: 7/10Grade: B+

A big screen version of a Pulitzer Prize winning stage play,PROOF eventually all too obviously falls victim to it's theatrical origins and ends up as flat and unexceptional with little cinematic qualities.A brilliant but ageing mathematician Robert (Anthony Hopkins), is looked after by his young daughter Catherine (Gwyneth Paltrow) through serious mental health problems until his death.Catherine has followed in her father's mathematical footsteps,and a former student of her father's,Hal (Jake Gyllenhaal) thinks he may have found evidence of products of her father's work in various notebooks.Catherine's sister Claire (Hope Davis) arrives for the funeral,and begins to think her sister is showing signs of mental illness like their father,but it soon emerges that it may be Catherine and not Robert who is responsible for this academic breakthrough, according to further research by Hal in the various notebooks.But it may not be an easy task for her to persuade the University where her father taught and she sporadically attends,about such proof.The operations of maths and mathematicians has not proved to be a particularly exciting subject in cinema, and PROOF is no exception to that rule.Like other titles such as GOOD WILL HUNTING,PI and A BEAUTIFUL MIND,there is a tendency to treat such characters as socially awkward,eccentric and mentally ill to beef up interest in the subject matter,though this veers into caricature and stereotyping.Director John Madden attempts to open up the stage original by way of actual Chicago locations,the addition of superfluous minor characters and some interesting camera movement,but the only really clever moments occur at the very beginning,with a semi-surrealist conversation between Hopkins and Paltrow which climaxes in a darkly amusing and adroit fashion,but there on in is afflicted by slabs of typically pretentious theatrical dialogue,unsympathetic characters and ill-cast actors.The acting on show eventually becomes too strident and over-emphatic at the cost of naturalness;La Paltrow goes through all kinds of emotions like fear,hate,love,sadness,desire,aggression,spite and petulance,without making her mentally fragile character likable or endearing,sometimes dissolving into theatrical histrionics which do not expose themselves well on the big screen.She clearly seems to be trying for another Oscar here as she won several years previously with Madden in Shakespeare IN LOVE,but in the event only received a Golden Globe nomination (which she lost to Felicity Huffman), and tries rather too hard and not too subtly in doing so.Hopkins does not appear that much but performs in his familiar post-Hannibal mode of speaking quietly one moment then bellowing out explosively the next, while Gyllenhall is ineffectual and whiny as Gwynnie's would-be suitor and fellow maths geek.The three principals don't really convince as maths devotees,and there is very little detail of the equations involved,which makes such emoting even less believable.The less academically-inclined main character, played by Davis, actually comes across as the most personable despite some brusque,neurotic,avaricious aspects,and wants to genuinely help her troubled sister.But PROOF's main problem is that the story is not particularly interesting or edifying,a bit like mathematics itself as most of the really important discoveries and revelations on the subject were made thousands of years ago (mainly in Ancient Greece), and any that are made in the modern era come across as slight amendments that cause barely a flicker of interest in the media or the general public.Gwyneth Paltrow has also appeared in the stage version,and that's where it basically belongs,as PROOF is essentially a theatrical and not cinematic experience.RATING:5 and a half out of 10.

Probably the most striking quality of proof is the simplicity of its narration. With a story which could have been put on celluloid in the most complex manner has been told in a very subtle manner. With great performances by Gwyneth paltrow and jack gyllenhall, this one is a must watch for everyone who can appreciate the beauty with which the screenplay portrays various emotions of every character and is thoroughly engrossing. Proof takes you through a journey of a daughter dealing with the demise of her father and at the same time trying to keep hold of sanity. Proof could easily been another "A beautiful mind" but refrains itself from doing so by focusing on emotions rather than relationships. This is an under rated masterpiece.

Gwyneth Paltrow was great, Anthony Hopkins in this supporting role was almost perfect, although he looked too old for the part (63 years), and this may be Jake Gyllenhaal's best movie. The product is ruined through being over-dominated by flashbacks, and by rushing the relationship between the two main characters.The story is designed to put you into the position of the boyfriend, Hal: You are supposed to believe as he does, that the professor, being an icon, towered over the current generation, and would always do so. This in order to set you up in believing that the boyfriend would be pushed into asserting at the crucial plot moment that the breakthrough paper Catherine (Paltrow) gave him to read was probably the work of her father, the Professor and not hers, and that her claiming it, was stealing it.This is the setup for a number of memorable scenes of hysteria for Gwenneth Paltrow. It's true that after starting her graduate work, she sacrificed years of her life to take care of her debilitated father. If taken out of the context of the sister Claire's sudden takeover of her life, the plot would all make sense, but because her design is to remove Catherine from Chicago to New York, in a "soft" wicked witch act, Gwynneth decides to play sick in order to play along and avoid the shame of having hooked up with someone that could disabuse you of your best work the morning after.This is where the weakest moment of the film comes. The characters are all weakened at this point of the plot, and they can never recover. It is now Paltrow's job to look as weak and abused as possible for the rest of the film, barring a couple of seconds in the flashbacks. The dominating obsessive sister from New York must have one more scene, to finally overcome Paltrow's last attempt at personal integrity. Finally the audience is invited, through flashbacks, to sympathize with the dying, demented professor, as he attempts to convince his daughter that he is getting his intellectual mojo back again. All of this is syrup, until we arrive at the moment of truth, when Catherine must literally run from the airport, desperately attempting to find Gyllenhaal on campus, since she is now alone, with no other friends, locked out of her former house by her sister, who has already completed checking her off of her "todo" list. Simply setting up this moment with a stronger relationship to Harold would have sufficed to save the movie. Instead we get one flashback with Hopkins as a teaser after another, many with duplicated footage. What really makes me angry, is thinking that it could be possible that the footage that might make this film hold together could have been shot, but was eliminated in order to get more minutes of Anthony Hopkins onto the screen.