And once again, Hollywood screws up

Rating: 5/10 (2 December 2004)

From what I've seen and heard, John Forbes Nash has achieved and been through enough in his live to fill an interesting movie with. Unfortunately, "A Beautiful Mind" is not that movie. Instead, it appears to be a standard case of Hollywood taking a potentially interesting story and dumbing it down to please a large audience.
It's hard to describe where exactly this movie goes wrong. On the surface level, everything is OK. The acting is fine (Ed Harris once again steals the show), the atmosphere is authentic, and the movie is beautifully shot.
This makes it a real shame that they didn't do anything more with the story. Instead of a complex story about real people, we get a simplified tale full of one-dimensional over-glorified characters (Jennifer Connelly is too nice to believe), a simplistic message ("love conquers all") and corny dialog. And to make matters even worse, all of this is drowned under an incredible load of (false) sentiment and bombastic music. This movie doesn't just want to tell a story, it also tells you how you should feel about that story.
This could have been an interesting movie, if it had just stuck to the facts and let people judge for themselves what they think about Mr Nash and his story. Instead, it is turned into a overly romanticized formula piece devoid of any real complexity.
**1/2 out of ***** stars (because of the technical quality)