Newbie's script for glossy biopic doesn't pass the Turing test

Rating: 6/10 (7 April 2015)

If you've seen "The Theory of Everything," you've already got the idea: heavily touched-up biopic about a brilliant British scientist with a bankable disability, assuming that Asperger's is a disability. It's far from clear that Turing really was an Aspie-he was noted for his sense of humor, apparently-but BC certainly plays him that way, like Sherlock (minus the ADD) channeling Max from "Parenthood."
Performances and production design (except for the sketchy CGI sequences) are great, but I don't think newbie screenwriter Graham Moore was really up to the task. As with the Hawking movie, there's a lot that's straight out of the Hollywood handbook-the "eureka!" moment in the pub, for example (isn't there a scene where one of Hawking's cronies draws a diagram of a black hole with beer suds?). The relationship between Turing and Cmdr Denniston (Charles Dance) faithfully reenacts the movie cliché of the maverick cop and his by-the-book superior (cf. Monk, to mention another Aspie sleuth, and Captain Stottlemeyer). It's great to watch BC chew up the scenery (wearing his custom-fitted replicas of the real Turing's dentures), but how much of this really has to do with Turing? (For a knowledgeable and entertaining answer to that question, see Christian Caryl's review on nybooks.com.)
Apart from that, there are plenty of plot points that just don't make sense: how likely is it that the boffins in Hut 8 would get to decide whether a U-boat attack on a convoy should be intercepted (thereby revealing that the Brits had broken the German code)?-nor would they have had a big map with a pushpin for every German sub. (How could they have known where they were before they'd broken the code?) And how likely is it that a detective investigating a burglary at Turing's house would start chatting with him about his theories on machine intelligence-seems like the screenwriter's handbook would recommend against cramming so much expository dialogue into a clearly invented scene.
The subplot about the Soviet spy (who did exist, but prob'ly never met Turing) suggests that he was so terrified of being outed that he'd be willing to shield a traitor, so I was glad to learn that the real Turing had an adventurous sex life (including in the West Village while a grad student at Princeton) when he was out of England and wasn't all that discreet at home (that's how he managed to get caught after all). There's so much in this film that's fictionalized or invented that the things that actually did happen (the crossword-puzzle contest, AT's engagement to Joan Clarke) start to seem like Moore must have made them up too.
Turing died, allegedly, after eating a poisoned apple... As one reviewer pointed out, you'd think a movie script-especially one that's at least half fairytale already, I might add-would have room for a detail like that. I guess it's a good thing that this film's going to acquaint a wider audience with the basic story of Turing's life and his immense contributions to the Allied war effort and computer science (and the barbarous way he was treated by the British legal system), but the tale as it's told in "The Imitation Game" felt so pumped up and contrived that we really didn't enjoy it all that much.