Good to watch, inspiring of sorts, but has loopholes

Rating: Null/10 (30 July 2004)

There have been many stories and cases about someone being mistreated/ abused/ abandoned as child growing up to hate the world, hate everything around him, and being disillusioned. In this movie, the protagonist, Will (Matt Damon), with that kind of past, is a mathematical genius working as a janitor at MIT. A Field's medal winning professor at MIT recognizes his talent and takes it upon himself to nurture and nourish it.
There are some serious loopholes in the movie. First, Will, though totally self educated, is shown to be genius at anything he can lay his hands on-- from history, to law, to organic chemistry, to, of course Maths. And all this while fully self educated. Its far more difficult to believe when, in the movie, he is mostly shown hanging around with his no good friends, picking up fist fights, drinking, getting in crimes, etc. I can understand amazing talent, yes, but even for that talent to show off as well it did in his case, the mind needs to be free from all this distractions. I can't help wondering how, he, in spite of all this disturbing things currently going on his life, he manages to do that. This is rather unreal to me.
Historically, the geniuses talked about in the movie and compared to Will (Einstein, Ramanujan) both didn't come from broken or abandoned families. Yes, both were geniuses who started of doing something else and were recognized late as geniuses, yes -- but that was because of social or educational systems in which they grew up that didn't recognize or encourage their merit. They could put their minds fully in the scientific or mathematical problems they were working on.
There are more clichés -- like the bar scene. I have something similar at "Harvard" bars, yes, but what is shown in the movie is rather exaggerated. Then, when referring to Ramanujan, the Maths Prof signs of the dot on forehead to indicate Indian -- thats a silly and stupid! MIT (and boston area, that has the BHCC too) has always had a lot of Indian maths profs and students, and while that action might have been understandable in the middle of cowboy country where no one may have seen an Indian for real, its difficult to imagine someone who works with so many Indians to give such a stereotypical description.
Then, the Maths prof himself, and his apparent inability to understand the effect of Will's past. Most MIT profs I know are more sensible than that. The relations between the faculty and the folks grounds dept (where the latter is seen swearing at the prof after he leaves) is much better here, and there is much much less swearing than is seen in the movie!
Wonder what the Bunker Hill CC folks thought of the movie, since in a way, it pits MIT against BHCC.
Still, its a good watch, and personally -- I can relate to somethings in the movie!