Jamie passion and passionfruit!

I was not very taken with this wooden vehicle for Gwyneth Paltrow based on a successful stage play about a mad mathematician and his talented daughter.  It may have been a gripping play but somehow the same magic doesn’t work here.  Paltrow is adequate enough in the lead role lurching from sanity to confusion to perhaps the onset of madness – all in a discreet manner but somehow there is not the range of light and shade the role requires.  Hope Davis is a good foil as the efficient sister Claire who wants to keep her sister safe and then we have glimpses of the power of Anthony Hopkins as the deceased genius and Jake Gyllenhaal never quite coming to grips with his role as the maths nerd who is not quite up to the action.  I found it all rather pedestrian without the drama that apparently the theatrical version had.  In the end John Madden´s film is rather tedious and not so very convincing.

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