Infinity Infinity (Air Date: Week Of 10/9/96)
Infinity. The very word suggests vast distances, uncountable numbers, and endless expanses of time and space. Fortunately or otherwise, "Infinity" is a very apt title for the new movie starring Matthew Broderick and Patricia Arquette.
You see, it's based on autobiographical material by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, and it focuses on the, quote, "intellectual," unquote, relationship between Feynman and his wife Arline. So basically it's a love story about a nuclear physicist and an artist. Or rather, it's a love story with a twist: you don't really get to see very much love, or much story for that matter.
Since the material in Feynman's books is anecdotal in nature, the movie flits from subject to subject, never staying long enough to get attached to anything. The characters we should be getting attached to, Richard and Arline, have an amazing lack of spark or chemistry between them.
Alarm bells should be going off when you hear the creative team behind "Infinity". Matthew Broderick made his directorial debut. The screenplay was written by Matthew's mother, Patricia Broderick, her first ever screenplay. She was also the producer, again for the first time. Are you seeing a pattern here?
To be fair, the production design by Bernt Capra and the cinematography by Toyomichi Kurita were exceptional, but the end result is a clumsy and stultifyingly boring, 119-minute film that tcould have been 30 minutes shorter, and might have been better as the TV Movie of the Week. You can't ask for a better straight line than a title like "Infinity." Read the book, it has got to be better than this.
Copyright 1996 Alex Lau