Decent, but most definitely not Best Picture material

Rating: 4/10 (15 February 2002)

Totally agree with the users speaking out on Russell Crowe Crowe and Jennifer Connelly (as eye-candy radiant as ever) for their easily superior turns in "The Insider" and "Requiem for a Dream" (in turn easily superior to "Mind"). Now, on to this picture, which I feel is the worst of the Best Picture nominees this year.....
Walking into the theatre beforehand I was well-aware the film was under a considerable amount of critical fire for glossing over Mr. Nash, the individual - making him out to be way too much of a saint - and his accomplishments. Now I must concede that - bearing in mind there's a great deal of validity to all those objections - however you want to cut it, film is just NOT the best medium to resort to for accuracy and factual glut to satisfy the average viewer. War extravaganzas like the recent "Black Hawk Down" and "Pearl Harbor" are glaring examples of such a fault.
But even looking past what the film is lacking in biographical substance (not very easy), there's not a whole lot in "A Beautiful Mind" to recommend here:

* John Forbes Nash as Crowe capably inhabits him is awfully hard to care about from beginning to end, despite the fact that the actor labors hard to flesh Nash out. He's fighting a screenplay that is far more concerned with the delusions haunting him than anything as substantial as his real life, or who HE was.
* Ed Harris and Christopher Plummer, each a great actor in a rather thankless role.
* It painted a portrait of schizophrenia that came off as, for the most part, pedestrian next to others found in the likes of, say, Darren Aronofsky's "Pi" and "Fight Club".
* This portrait is worsened by moments supposed to incite laughter from the audience as a result of Nash's illness.
* It sprung a 'twist' halfway through that came off like lazy screenwriting or a half-baked rehash of the Revelation concerning people who don't actually exist, something Hollywood ought to retire for a while.

* Not an iota of depth, but a good dose of superficiality, is to be found in the movie's depiction of why Mr. Nash was such a brilliant mathematician or what attracted Alicia Larde to him in the first place. Or why she put up with Nash so long. (Alicia is underwritten to such a great extent, you have to admire that Jennifer Connelly doesn't emerge as defeated from the screenplay as you would think, either.)
* It actually left me wondering, like many Miramax-backed yarns of late, whether the central motivation behind its making was to win Oscars - not exactly an uplifting feeling, but then again, I guess the movie must have failed in its obvious attempts near the end to inspire that.
For all the faults of "Moulin Rouge", "Gosford Park", "Lord of the Rings" and several other films that didn't make the Best Picture cut, but should have, at least they didn't seem nearly as calculated, and had far more interesting methods of storytelling guiding them. (The fine Apollo 13 aside, I feel Ron 'Opie' Howard's talent is vastly overrated.) Neither did many of them seem to overstay their welcome as much as "A Beautiful Mind" (over 2 hours long).
There are spots where the movie simply DRAGS, and threatens to drag the viewer's opinion of the proceedings down with it, despite the valiant efforts of Crowe and Connelly to inject some interest factor into Akiva Goldsman's predictable screenplay (Golden Globe worthy my A$$). At times they almost succeeded. In the end, they are the only elements of the movie worth all the Oscar buzz. Should you be in search of an adequate starting showcase for their talent, but not much more, look no further and check this one out, but brace yourself for the running time.