Einstein acts like such an idiot in this movie, screaming "Wahoo!" and riding around in convertables like he thinks he's Elvis or something. Meanwhile his daughter is all pretentious and tries to act smarter than him--in fact she suceedes because Einstein looks so much stupider than he was in real life!
Do not question Uncle!
It's impossible to take someone seriously when judging someone else as stupid or idiotic when that first someone cannot himself spell or use anything that resembles correct grammar. I'm afraid that the only one who comes off as stupid here my friend is you.
shareNot only is his grammar bad, but she's not Einstein's daughter-- she's his niece.
share Einstein was not an uptight intellectual.
He believed that the magic of the world of childhood was the most beautiful thing on earth, that unrestrained imagination was worth alot more than accumulated knowledge.
this was a very good portrayal of what hed have been like
Yeah you're right in that a lot of his quotations have humor injected into them. But the way he runs around with his fellow gray-haired colleages, acting like a child and putting explosives under automobiles for kicks is somewhat degrading to his maturity.
Hmmm, I didn't mind that so much -- Einstein reportedly was playful and fond of jokes that could be seen by some as childish -- but what makes me shake my head about this movie is that it completely misconstrues what Einstein was on about, and has him (and his "scientist" buddies) making dumb comments that Einstein would never have made, because they wouldn't have made sense in light of what he believed.
I know, I know, a movie shouldn't have to be a physics class and overly serious and profound -- and I'm not saying that this one should have been. But that shouldn't mean just anything goes, either. It was clear the writer didn't have a clue about how Einstein saw the universe, and that he just used Einstein's terminology and changed what it was referring to, even in Einstein's dialogue here, into whatever the writer wanted it to mean in a fairly unintelligent way. He simply turned Einstein into the doddering-but-crafty old wise-advice-giving uncle that's a bit of a cliché in American movies, but peppered his dialogue with misused relativistic terms to justify using him as a character.
I really hate it when movies dumb things down to feed greeting-card-style sentimentality.
You might very well think that. I couldn't possibly comment.
A little known fact: My great-uncle Al was a BIG fan of the practical joke.
He thought them up as a way to relax. My grandmother told me that he once bought a rubber/plastic ( ?? hard to remember now) replica of dog feces and left it on the bathroom floor much to the horror of the family.
When he worked, he worked. And when he played he played - like a child at times.
Yes, every word (above) is true.
"putting explosives under automobiles for kicks"
He didn't put explosives under any car. At the end, the transmitter he used to cause Meg's car to stall caused the car to backfire.
Life, every now and then, behaves as though it had seen too many bad movies
He was intelligent. Who ever said he was tragically hip? He was probably a nerd.
He was no Richard P. Feynman, at any rate.
Has anyone seen that photo of Einstein with his tongue sticking out? I think he must have had a playful sense of humour.
sharehe loved practical jokes
and why is it that being enthusiastic about life and loving it make him appear dumb???
some of the most intelligent people I know are the ones that love life the most and have the best sense of humour and a great inner child... its that inner child that makes them wonder about everything and drives them to keep on discovering.
is it so far-fetched that that same inner child can come out as playful behaviour?
the way he was portrayed is the reason I love this movie, is that Einstein is shown as playful instead of the uptight intellectual most people are that have become conceited about their intelligence (and often are thicker than the sludge you find at the bottom of a river, I suspect the OP is one of those people)
I know that while I was growing up in the 40's, Einstein was considered very much of a character. One supposedly story about him is that a lady sitting by him at a banquet and offended by his b.o. remarked, "You smell", and his answer was, "No, I stink and you smell."
Life, every now and then, behaves as though it had seen too many bad movies
I dont' agree with the OP. He acts like a person consumed with life. HE doesn't scream wahoo, and as has been mentioned before she wasn't his daughter. Wasspam, did you actually watch the movie or are you depending on someone elses comments of the movie? Of course they had to overlay a romance to make the story...and probably had to make up how Einstein would have acted. But so what? I liked WM's protrayal of AE and the movie in general.
my god its full of stars
[deleted]
Firstly, this movie wasn't meant to be taken seriously as a historically accurate piece of work. Secondly, Einstein and his collegues were ancient, and had sort of been through the mill of intellectual inquiry.. By this time in life they were supposed to be slowing down, focusing on more trivial and conversely more important things in life, like friendship, family, the simple exhilleration of fun car rides, and appreciating love.. Things they didn't neccessarily focus on as much when they were having their greatest breakthroughs.
These men were hardly stupid, but had simply exhausted the parts of themselves that were *purely* intellectual. However, that's not to say they had given up on gaining knowledge, and theorizing, and testing hypotheses.. All of those aspects of their minds you see at work time and time again, only, for the application of helping Edward and making Catherine happy.
Take this into consideration, and I think you'll enjoy the movie a lot more.
Save Eli Stone
[deleted]
one thing Einstein's intelligence WAS NEVER over rated.
And Yes he had a child like interest in life.
just before the War he was in hiding a short distance from my home in Norfolk UK.
And having spoken with a person who was very privileged to know him during this time.
I have discovered that he had a marvelous sense of humor and a child like love of jokes and pranks.
[deleted]