L'amour en équation

Catherine Boyd (Meg Ryan) is the niece of Albert Einstein (Walter Matthau) and engaged to pompous professor James Moreland (Stephen Fry). Catherine and James start having car trouble. Ed Walters (Tim Robbins), Bob Rosetti (Tony Shalhoub), and Frank (Frank Whaley) are working in the garage. Ed falls head over heels for Catherine. Einstein intervenes with his scientist friends Nathan Liebknecht (Joseph Maher), Kurt Gödel (Lou Jacobi), and Boris Podolsky (Gene Saks) to perfect a Grand Design. Louis Bamberger (Charles Durning) is the head of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

The rom-com formula is often derided but there is a reason why everyone keeps repeating it. Catherine and Ed need much more heat in their first meeting. The romance is too one-sided and sputters along. They really don't have enough time together. Even queen Meg Ryan cannot drive this rom-com at full speed. Ed spends more time with Einstein than her. The standout is Walter Matthau and his gang of elderly gentlemen. They are fun and able to deliver a few funny moments. It's more of a hybrid between a rom-com and a buddy movie. This sorta works and has some fun doing it.

I recently saw I.Q. and even though I'm not a romantic comedy type of gal, I think that it was just a nice and sweet movie to watch. So many movies in my opinion lack honesty. You know that feeling when you're watching a movie and you just feel robbed because it's taking something from the story and it was like the director just threw it together like it was trash? The story between the scientists is a sweet and funny one. How they stuck together and they tried to help Tim Robbins character become smart. I liked the love story between Tim and Meg because it was simple and brought up a good point when it comes to love, "nothing is what it seems". I would recommend this for a Sunday morning.

7/10

The love story here is cute and Tim Robbins has some nice moments, but the reason to watch the movie is Walter Matthau as Albert Einstien. (Meg Ryan has a typical Meg-Ryan-nice-girl performance. What that means, exactly, is up to the reader to decide.) Matthau makes the physicist humble, scheming, fun, and generally endearing. Plus, he and his peers have most of the great lines (e.g. "Don't let your brain interfere with your heart".)

I saw "I.Q." again today, and now realize how good a movie it is. In fact, I boosted my rating. Since my first viewing, I have seen a couple of biographical movies about Albert Einstein, and that gave me a framework for better appreciating some of the humor. I own the DVD and, while it has no extras, it is a very nice presentation, and the sound is Dolby 5.1. There was a scene with birds twittering in the surround speakers, thoroughly confusing my cat, Bullet.

Set in the 1950s, when Eisenhower was president, and both the US and Russia were in a race of sorts to explore space, Tim Robbins plays a mechanic who likes to read astronomy and science for fun. Meg Ryan plays a mathematician who isn't quite sure of herself, and Matthau plays Albert Einstein, her uncle. In a round-about way, Einstein and his fellow Physicists play matchmaker, and try to get Ryan and Robbins together. This is simply a wonderful romantic comedy with no swearing, no sex, and very little innuendo.

I believe this will ultimately be regarded as one of Ryan's best, no matter where it stands today or no matter how badly it might have bombed at the box office.

Why? Because it's unabashedly everything her other 'cute' movies play at doing; because Tim Robbins is simply brilliant; because Einstein's friends are so good; because Tony S is nothing short of brilliant; and because Walter Matthau is perhaps the real star.

There are memorable quotes you will read about in this section, but they don't really work unless you see them being delivered.

This is only a romp, and it's only for fun, but it has a strong underlying message delivered by Matthau towards the end.

It's very well acted; and if you think Ryan's character is a bit unreal, fine: it is. But that's what you get for the price of admission.