This should never have been made

Rating: 3/10 (11 February 2015)

I am a die-hard admirer of Mr. Hawking's life and work. And while, when our present becomes history, he won't be counted among Newton, Einstein or likes of them, he is still a living symbol, one of the greatest contemporary minds. Speaking of it, do you know exactly what his greatest scientific discoveries are? A movie will try to give you an even sloppier explanation then what Interstellar did of something else. Ultimately, it is not important, as he himself disproved his greatest discovery. His true lifetime achievement lies instead in popularization of science. Making the unimaginable (borderline) understandable. And that is where he will live forever as an inspiration beside people like Feynman, Samuelson or Sagan.
Sadly, movie tackles none of this. Even worse, it works against his lifetime work. As a movie that explores Hawking's personal life instead of professional, it just serves as deterrent to current generation of potential geniuses. Stephen's and Jane's relationship is highly improbable today. But script does not promote any encouragement to offset this, other than misplaced "No difficult how life may seem..." quote. Instead, we are served with scene after scene of increasing disfigurement and disability without a point. I understand that this is historical fact, but Hawking himself repeats time after time how much joy he had in life. Very little of this joy is transferred into the movie, primarily due to really bad character writing.
Movie is a budget production, more suitable for TV then for cinema. Eddie Redmayne is convincing as Hawking, although pretty one-dimensional. Unfortunately, horrible makeup work makes him much younger than required in second part of the movie. Felicity Jones works well as Jane Hawking, but again has such a shallow text that Kirsten Stewart could have played the role better, as a master of blank stares and open mouths.
Funny how Hawking himself did not appear in the movie. He certainly does cameos for The Big Bang Theory, so why not here? 3/10