Infinity

Bomb Rating: 

If its theme were any more artificially sweet, this movie would be classified a carcinogen.

Whose bright idea was it to let Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick)behind the camera? Directing talent aside, shouldn't this distinction be reserved for actors who can, at the very least, act? One would presume a Robert De Niro or a Clint Eastwood might have some concept of what it takes to direct a film, but letting Matthew Broderick direct is like letting your grandmother fly a fighter plane because she once successfully pulled her Delta Eighty-eight into the driveway without running over the dog.

What makes this film even more curious is that the screenwriter is Broderick's mother, Patricia. It's insidious enough that every executive in Hollywood thinks himself or herself a good enough writer to tell people like William Goldman and Robert Towne to suck on their thumbs while "we put a third arm on your protagonist." But the mother of a low-grade actor? This film's only shot at an Oscar hinges on the creation of a new category called "Most Flagrant Example of Nepotism."

"Infinity" is based on the early life of physicist Richard Feynman (Broderick), whose girlfriend and later, wife, Arlene (Patricia Arquette), gets tuberculosis and gradually dies as Feynman works on the Manhattan Project. The Amazing Screenwriting Mom astounds us with her final point that even the analytical heart of a numbers guy like Feynman can be penetrated by the inexplicable wonders of love. If its theme were any more artificially sweet, this movie would be classified a carcinogen.

From the final drive to Arlene's bedside to the final tryst in the Native American caves, not a single, pointless scene is left out. Apparently the Amazing Screenwriting Mom has learned the fine art of plot editing with that most useful of tools, the Nerf Knife.

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