Easy Math

Rating: 6/10 (25 April 2017)

Overall, I think this movie is good but perhaps a little overrated. I'll talk about everything else later but the biggest issue everyone overlooks is the supposedly "difficult" math problems Professor Lambeau assigns at the beginning of the movie. The first problem has four parts which involve finding an adjacency matrix, a new matrix after 3 walks in G, and generating two functions for walks. To be fair, the average moviegoer wouldn't know what the problem is about, but it would be no problem for a graduate-level math student. The second problem asks for the number of trees with n labeled vertices and to draw all homeomorphically irreducible trees with n = 10. An undergraduate student who has taken discrete math and/or graph theory would be able to solve this problem as well. The extra attention to detail of assigning the class a genuinely difficult problem for a graduate- level mathematics course would've given the film more credibility, without feeling like it was "dumbed down" for the general movie-going audience.
I'll briefly mention everything else: Robin Williams is the best part of the movie; he turns in a strong, versatile performance and is the only likable character. Matt Damon's acting is also great but his character is (for me personally) so abrasive and hard to sympathize with, despite his tragic past. The first 30-40 minutes dragged for me and I felt almost half of that section could have been cut. Once the movie gets going, its pretty engaging and there are a couple genuinely emotional scenes. If you're curious about checking it out, don't be discouraged. It might sound like I'm saying a lot of bad things about it, and even though its not perfect, its worth seeing at least once.