This is a work of fiction, not a biography

Rating: 6/10 (3 January 2015)

Let me state the good things about "The Theory Of Everything". First, Eddie Redmayne does an excellent job of conveying the progressive degeneration of Stephen Hawking's condition. Felicity Jones is good, if a touch too saintly, as Jane Hawking. Secondly, the storyline of the film is formulaic but competent. This makes "The Theory Of Everything" pleasant, occasionally funny and occasionally emotionally involving.
It is neither Redmayne's nor Jones' fault that that their parts bear only a passing similarity to the people they are depicting. However, it is wholly the writers' fault that the story departs grossly from Jane Hawking's book, upon which the film is said to be based, in several places. Characters are invented, scenes that never took place are interpolated into the story and some real events are shifted in time for purely dramatic effect in a way for which not even Stephen Hawking could provide a proof! In short, "The Theory Of Everything" has to be taken as mostly a fictional representation of the lives of the Hawkings.
If you go to see this film simply to be entertained and don't mind whether or not what you see is accurate, then you will be entertained. However, if like me you dislike wondering whether or not one scene is reasonably true to the facts but the next one is an invention - or vice versa, or that both are true, or that both are fictional - you may be irritated.
I find it troubling that so many films purporting to depict the lives of real people or historical events distort the truth with a total disregard for the consequences of spreading what, in effect, are lies. "The Theory Of Everything" falls squarely into this unedifying category.