The central approach is quite good: Einstein v Newton during WW1. It's the perfect setting for yet another reminder of the British/German enmity that Hollywood loves to ram down our throats. According to the plot, Einstein is given a top Berlin academic post in order to embarrass the Britons by proving Newton wrong. Whilst in England Sir Arthur Eddington is given a senior Cambridge position just in order to prove the upstart German wrong.
All the standard ingredients are there; nasty German scientists devoted to anti-personnel gas production, stiff old aristocrats interfering with progress and our two cool dudes strutting around their patches telling everyone what's what. But it's not just about giving the Krauts another bashing. Once again the Studios give us a spoon fed morality session with stereotypical bad guys looking like greasy bankers, sold out scientists and pompous officials waging senseless war for their own profit and power. (If only life was that clear cut) Meanwhile the good guys, Eddington and Einstein, are both above the mass killing. Their search for truth is a shining example of how the individual can change the world - or so Eddington tells us in a much edited final speech that could have been written by Thatcher.
The sheer banality of the script is enough to bend space itself. Max Plank makes a stage entrance so contrived that even the Cleethorpes Junior School Drama Society would be embarrassed to stage it. We are treated to Einstein the improvised clown who leaps from boats explaining relativity to knee high children. Then he becomes a disheveled dropout who goes around demanding that the German authorities stop their gas campaign. Once again Hollywood takes 21st century man and sticks him into 19th.century society and once again it doesn't work. Our Einstein is so profoundly rude and abusive to the authorities that you know exactly which century he comes from.
Of course David Tenant as Eddington is superb. Had he not been in the show I don't think I could have stuck it out and written this review. Watch this if you have a crush on him or an obsessive interest in Einstein. But don't expect to learn anything about 'Einstein the Man' in this movie for it was one of the worst pieces of casting and scripting that I've ever had the misfortune to endure.
