User reviews

You've got to be kidding. A seven out of ten? I guess it's possible, people do watch Dr. Phil. That's pretty painful as well. But not as painful as watching Paltrow who's about ten years too old for the part. A character that sulks and wallows in self-pity but conveniently stops for five minutes to bed a young male model stud that is also a math genius. This is the only respite. She cries and wines the rest of the movie. The math stud is madly in love with her but we can't understand why. The only explanation is they both have serious personality problems. If you have those same types of problems you might like the movie. I won't bother to go into the "plot", other than to say it's ridicules, boring and utterly predictable. The movie is obviously for women and the only men who will sit through this turkey are doing so just to keep their wives from getting angry and acting like the star of Proof.

I could not bear more than half an hour of this movie. From the glowing reviews, I thought it'd be a story about geniuses, mathematics and science - stuff I'm interested in. Instead, it turned out to be about this crazy chick who yells at everyone given the slightest provocation. The movie's script must have been longer than usual because all the characters seem to be saying a lot of things and talking just like women do i.e. too much. The worst part, the men in the film were made to do the same. Every now and then there's a morsel of science thrown at us but it quickly gets lost in all the personal issues the main female character is suffering from. I'm all for women's equality or whatever but just don't have it in me to sit through drivel like this. If we're supposed to "connect" with the crazy woman on some level, why don't they just tell us that in the reviews? Instead, the reviews make it sound all mysterious and scientific. It's a glorified chick flick, sorry. And fine, women can be geniuses too but apparently they still have to bitch about everything.

I was very excited when the movie was about to start considering that it would reveal sth scientific or Dobbs and Catherine would accomplish a very important theorem working together for a long time caring the signs of science and life(Also taking care what her father tried to do in his last years).İf the film was in this concept,it would be a great production.Anyway; it is gonna be a little sharp but there was nothing in the movie,or I can say that I gained nothing.I am an Electrical&Elrctronical Engineering student in METU.This may be the reason why I think like that.However this doesn't change the fact that the ending of the movie was horrible,horrible horrible .... Do the American people hate science so much that there is nothing scientific within the movie although it was supposed to be ....(İt would be acceptable if the other elements except science were processed in a good way;unfortunately the film was a disaster...)

Proof is the beginning of a story. It's useful to compare it to the first half hour of A Beautiful Mind; consider it background for something else.

A genius professional mathematician goes out of his mind and is cared for by a loving family member. There's one little bit more of story line and that's it.

The movie is all anticipation, and then ... nothing.

The little that is told, is told beautifully and professionally. The actors/actresses do a good job, as do the production team. But there simply isn't a story to be told here. It reminds me of Postcard From the Edge, except it's even lighter.

I found the movie so frustrating, I had to turn it off after about 20 minutes. Examples:

High-school-level conversation about insanity between two people who are both supposed to be exceptional mathematicians.

Ridiculous back-and-forth between Gwyneth Paltrow and Jake Gyllenhaal where they keep changing attitudes and even personalities. I know it's based on a stage play, but couldn't they calm it down a bit for the screen?

Lazy screenplay shorthand for bossy woman: talking on cell phone about china patterns while walking through airport. Grrrr!

And finally, what made me shut it off: That insane conversation between Paltrow and Hope Davis, where one thinks the other is hallucinating for no apparent reason.

I found the constant bickering between Catherine and Claire to be tedious, I found neither of their characters sympathetic or likable. But the plot requires the audience to wonder whether or not Catherine is crazy. But this brings me to the character Robert. We are expected to believe that the character portrayed by Anthony Hopkins was a mentally ill man driven by his obsessions and delusions, a man who borrowed huge numbers of library books he never intended to read in order to extract a coded message in the Dewey decimals, a graphomaniac who obsessively wrote gibberish into hundreds of notebooks. Why then, when he interacts with the various players in this movie does he always come across as a laid back, mellow, mild mannered man. Am I the only one to notice the inconsistency between his demeanour and his history of mental illness. The two just don't jive. I'm surprised this was such a successful play, converting it to a movie was not an inspired idea, in my opinion.

A very well acted film supported by an excellent soundtrack all based upon a misshapen story with misshapen characters. That's why I gave it a 3. 1 point for a film that's technically well done, 1 point for acting, 1 point for soundtrack. The story, instead of multiplying those points, provides a 0. Zero is not a valid score, so I gave it a 3.

It's as if the story came out of the mind of the character Anthony Hopkins played. I.e., a meandering romantic tale only loosely based on math, invention, and higher education.

For math nerds hoping for a math film, it will be a disappointment. Only a few name drops of mathematicians, theorems, and problem-solving techniques. At its best, it gives some insight into higher education that breaks one cliché: that it's boring. At its worst, it's cliché. Not just cliché, but non-factual cliché based on a reality morph that somebody who never attended a college got from walking past college campuses and hearing indirectly about parties, and watching films like Pi, Animal House, and A Beautiful Mind (all of which you should see instead of this).