A wonderful dramatization, if a little uninvolving

Rating: 7/10 (4 January 2016)

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
At Cambridge University in 1963, young physicist Stephen Hawking (Eddie Redmayne) is on the road to greatness, and despite his social awkwardness, has even managed to attract the attention of Jane (Felicity Jones), a young female student. Then he is suddenly stricken down with Motor Neurone Disease, leaving him a paralyzed, invalid wreck. The doctors tell him he only has a few years to live, but he and Jane fight the odds and defeat them head on, with Stephen living a full and brilliant life, and becoming one of the most celebrated physicists of all time.
Here I am, a year after it came out, finally reviewing the film that may well serve as Redmayne's Taxi Driver, while he's kicked off this year with another film released on New Year's Day, where he's played a trans-gendering artist. A biopic of well known professor Stephen Hawking was a very interesting idea for a film dramatization, given the place he's managed to secure in popular culture over the years for someone from such an unshow-business background (I honestly thought he was genuinely American, given his voice box.)
Yet somehow, despite some impressive acting and sweeping production values, The Theory of Everything fails to really sweep you up in the account of Hawking's life. Something...is just missing from the script, some kind of oompth or gravitas that gives the drama the real motivating kick that it needs to be really amazing. Somehow, you're just not as embroiled in the trials and tribulations of his life as you could have been. It's one of those films where everything is aesthetically fine, but no real magic spins off.
Still, Redmayne deserves his recognition, and it could have been a far worse attempt to document this most unique and amazing of men. ***