Terrible

Rating: 2/10 (28 February 2015)

The Theory of Everything is a terrible movie, which is a shame because it had the potential to be much better but due to poor directing, screenplay, acting (with one exception), and cinematography it falls way short.
This movie takes absolutely no risks or chances. They could have shown Stephen Hawking and Jane trying to have sex despite his disability, and the resulting scene could have been both tragic and powerful if done correctly. But they don't attempt this. All sexual encounters in this movie are implied. Look, I don't go to movies to watch sex scenes, but would it have killed the director to try and show something a bit risqué? Is Hollywood not ready to show a person with disabilities making love? They completely shy away from the basic humanistic aspects of their portrayal of Dr. Hawking and simply show the most formulaic of love story plots.
The movie focuses almost exclusively on the "love" story between Jane and Stephen Hawking. However, the two main actors Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones have very little on-screen chemistry and the entire fabrication of their cinema relationship is artificial to the core. Regarding the overall acting, a special mention needs to be said about Felicity Jones' poor acting skills in this movie. She seems to handle most scenes with a cheeky, almost irritated delivery of her lines as if everything about being with Stephen Hawking seems to bother her. She never seems to show happiness at all in the movie (or any emotions, really). However, Eddie Redmayne's acting is significantly better. He's able to convey a decent amount of emotion sometimes without saying anything and using only facial expressions. I think that takes a lot of skill and that is the main reason why I don't give this movie a 1/10. However, the poor screenplay and scriptwriting leaves Redmayne with very little to work with other than mimicking Stephen Hawking. This is a shame because a better script could have flexed his acting muscles to portray some more raw emotion such as anger and frustration over his disability.
As for the directing, the movie shows the steady degeneration of Stephen Hawking as he goes from a normal young man to someone with severe disabilities, yet many scenes appeared to be shot out of order because sometimes his condition seems to have suddenly improved versus the scene before. For example, in one scene he is hardly able to talk without a lot of difficulty and slurring of his speech, but in the next he speaks to his father at an almost normal pace. To me, this inconsistency demonstrates poor directing and/or editing. Also, there is a very strange progression of time in this movie. His kids seem almost born out of nothing. Another scene, another baby. Speaking of his kids, they seem to be absent from a vast majority of scenes and play almost no role in the movie. I understand the movie his not about their kids, but would it have killed them to put in even a single line that shows how they feel about having a father like Stephen Hawking?
The cinematography is truly basic, especially for a movie nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award (thankfully not nominated for best cinematography.) The camera work is very uninspired and boring and mostly sticks to showing the characters in each scene. Very little thought is put into framing or lighting with very basic themes like "bright morning scenes for happy moments" and "dark evening scenes for sad moments". How very boring. There are only two good moments of cinematography in the entire film which last about 10 and 5 seconds respectively, and that is pretty sad for a 2 hour movie.
Finally, one of my biggest gripes with the movie was how it dealt with the aspect of Stephen Hawking being an atheist. The script seemed to antagonize this fact, making it appear that Stephen's atheistic views were wrong and his wife's views were virtuous. I'm sorry, but please refrain from injecting your own religious biases into a film. There are already enough Christian-centric movies coming out of Hollywood each year, we don't need another one tooting God's horn.
Overall 2/10 simply for the quality of Eddie Redmayne's portrayal and nothing else.