Accessible Drama Woven around Key Facts

Rating: 8/10 (30 November 2014)

The Theory of Everything is an enjoyable flick that simply ticks off key occurrences in Hawkings's life, embedding them in decently paced and storyboarded exposition.
And I know that sounds like damning with faint praise. As I watched "Everything", I simply couldn't stop wondering whether it would measure up to the Errol Morris work, "A Brief History of Time".
I think, in the end, that Morris's work sort of obviates this new treatment, which felt like a recasting of "Brief" as straight-up film storytelling.
Wow. I realize that I need to cut to the chase, here: I'm torn because "Everything" is obviously a labor of love, and a paean to a contemporary secular saint. Ergo, I would be a stick-in-the-mud not to respect and enjoy it. But this doesn't change the fact that the treatment just rubbed me the wrong way. Something about the whole idea of minting a standard, groomed/greenlit feature film about Hawking bugs me.
But it's a nice flick, as I said quite enjoyable, and my stylistic remonstrance only knocked my rating down a couple of notches.