Read the book

Rating: 2/10 (7 March 2002)

If you consider yourself an intellectual or a seeker of truth, read the book and don't waste your time watching this piece of technicolor drivel. The lies so far outweigh the truth as to make it a betrayal of its subject and its audience. That is despite good performances by Crowe and Connelly and some others and three false scenes clever enough to justify themselves.

I am not a mathematician or a scientist, but despite my lack of understanding, the first page of Sylvia Nasar's book was more interesting to me than the entire movie.
Screenplays frequently change facts and oversimplify to convey important information or feelings efficiently and powerfully. I'm not offended by such fictionalization per se. But this movie takes a fascinating real story and completely ignores almost everything fascinating about it and tells a different, ridiculous story that would be journalistically justifiable but mediocre at best as art IF IT WERE TRUE ... which it is not.
Until now I thought Moulin Rouge was the worst movie of the year ... I have revised my opinion.