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Updated 47 Days ago

Flash Of Genius - Tilting At Windshields

Greg Kinnear stars as Bob Kearns in the new movie Flash Of Genius.  Based on a true story, Bob Kearns is a college professor and an amateur inventor.  He’s living a modest existence with his wife and six children.  Driving home from church one day he gets frustrated at the fact that his windshield wipers are faster than the rainfall.  Having sustained an eye injury years ago, he’s very much aware of how the eyelid maintains the proper level of moisture by blinking.  So he goes to his basement and invents the Kearns Blinking Eye Wiper in order to immolate the movement of an eyelid.  He doesn’t know it yet, but he’s inadvertently done what Ford and GM having been throwing good money after bad to achieve.  He’s invented the intermittent wiper.

It seems odd to think that not only did intermittent wipers not always exist, but that they were apparently very difficult to perfect.  Granted, as far as I know, the internal combustion engine runs on magic and love.  Kearns takes his invention to Ford (he’s a Ford man) and they are stunned.  They have several meetings and are on the brink of finalizing a deal that will allow Kearns to create his own company and manufacture the device exclusively for Ford.  However, just as Ford is about to back up a Brinks truck to his house, they pull out of the deal and won’t return his phone calls.  Imagine Kearns’ surprise when next year the new Ford Mustang features intermittent wipers.  He approaches Ford but not only do they refuse to acknowledge his work; they act like he’s a crackpot that they were merely humoring. 

Kearns decides to sue but quickly discovers that most lawyers won’t even take his call.  The idea of getting bogged down in a suit against a major conglomerate like Ford is too costly and, more importantly, intimidating.  The lawyers he can find want him to opt for a quick settlement.  The stress of taking on the case himself eventually leads to a nervous breakdown.

Kinnear is always charming, even when he’s playing flawed characters.  Here his performance misses the mark just a touch.  He’s almost too likeable in the roll.  As the movie progresses, we realize that he’s one of those inventors that so focused on his work that his social skills suffer.  However, we don’t really see that in the first half of the film.  He’s neither absentminded nor socially inept.  So when he takes on those traits in the last third of the film, it seems a little out of place.  We don’t really see a gradual onset of these qualities so I don’t think the movie is attempting to depict a descent into madness.

Flash Of Genius is a fascinating story, told drably.  The movie has no real directorial flourishes that might dress up its fairly straight-forward story telling.  What it has going for it is the fact that it’s true.  However, at times it feels more like somebody filmed a Wikipedia article.

On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being Tucker: A Man And His Dream and 1 being Herbie Goes Bananas, Flash Of Genius gets a 6.



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