A gem: sharp, bright and polished - and playful.

Rating: 9/10 (5 February 2007)

This is a gem of a movie. It has fun with a lot of difficult ideas - free will and authorial responsibility to name just two. And in case you didn't spot the games with logic, almost every named character has the name of a famous mathematician or scientist. The early reference to Italo Calvino is another giveaway. This is lovely, elegant, playful movie-making - compare the overlong and clankingly obvious 'Adaptation'. It is also beautifully acted: Thomson just sufficiently OTT, Hoffmann getting on with the job instead of his usual one-man theatre workshop, Gyllenhaal excellent and Ferrell, perhaps surprisingly, up to the task. Plausibility? Strict logic? It's much more intelligent than that.