Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

There's no reason an interesting -- even a fascinating -- movie couldn't be made about an electrical engineer who invents the now-indispensable intermittent windshield wiper, has the device stolen by the Ford Motor Company, strives for recognition for years, and finally succeeds in court while representing himself.This isn't it, though. We learn practically nothing about the device itself. (I've always been curious about how the thing knows when to make its next swipe. What's it got, an alarm clock?) The story focuses on the man himself, a professor of engineering, played by Greg Kinnear, and on his strenuous and increasingly lonely quest.There are too many flaws to make the movie more than of passing interest. Greg Kinnear is neither a thoughtful nor a forceful actor, for one thing. He's good at being mild mannered, and he's THAT, but not much more. In his refusal to compromise with Ford's settlement offers, he projects not the pride of a man cheated but the dumb-calf stolidity of someone who lives in another dimension and is convinced it's real.The script is so formulaic that it suggests that strictly commercial considerations lay behind it.That "other dimension," for instance. Kinnear's character spends some months in a psychiatric hospital. All we see him do on screen is make late-night calls, speak sharply to his family, ask if his assistant has been talking to the enemy, and finally tear angrily into the engine of a stranger's Ford that has his stolen invention in it. For rudeness, you are avoided. For the destruction of a stranger's engine, you get sued or go to jail. What's missing from this picture is what led to his hospitalization.But then the whole thing seems glossed over with familiar cuts and pastes. We've seen it before, the underdog trying to sue the Great External Auditory Meatus Corporation, having to demonstrate the injustice with only minimal resources at his command."Marie" had Sissy Spacek exposing corruption in politics. "Erin Brokovitch" had Julia Roberts fighting Pacific Gas and Electric. In "A Civil Action," John Travolta sacrificed everything to bring Beatrice Foods and Grace and Co. to justice. "Class Action" pitted Gene Hackman against The Cosmological Automobile Company. Paul Newman almost went nuts trying to get money out of St. Catherine Laboret Hospital in "Verdict." Big Tobacco tried to kill the whistle blower in "Insider." And so on and on and on.Of course not all the heroes in these movies went berserk as Kinnear's character apparently does. But then Ron Howard scored big with a lunatic genius in "A Brilliant Mind," which I would guess accounts for the title of this movie.The guy's wife and kids leave him. That's par for the formula course. His children are estranged. His friends shun him. The Ford representatives offer him $11 million but he refuses it and they think he's stupid. He wants his NAME on that WINDSHIELD WIPER! In court, pro se, he makes a fool of himself at first but then is shown making one or two clever cross examinations and wins the case. He may win, but the audience doesn't.

When I heard "Flash Of Genius" was about the invention of the intermittent windshield wiper I thought instead of viewing it, perhaps, I might spend my time watching paint dry because it would be of equal entertainment with the added benefit of a freshly painted room. I'm glad I opted to watch the "wiper story" because it is a factual document of one of the world's largest corporations doing what they do on a daily basis, that is to take advantage of their enormous power with little or no regard to the individual...But, I'm glad to report, in this case, having criminal culpability and enormous financial liability.Dr. Bob Kearns was a inventor, college professor, and family man. He solved the deceptively simple task of matching an automobile's windshield wiper wipe frequency to varying rain intensity. Bottom line, he invented the intermittent windshield wiper for the automobile, but he made the mistake of allowing Ford to dissect his invention prior to having an ironclad contract. He trusted Ford to be morally upright and true to their word...Big mistake! What follows is a man's personal descent into Hell. His best friend and business partner bails on him, he suffers a mental breakdown complete with forced hospitalization, more than one or two lawyers claiming to do whatever it takes for justice actually are hoping for fast settlements, and his wife divorces him moving away with their kids. All the while, first Ford, and then all automakers, sell new cars with their miraculous "intermittent wiper" feature. As I watched this I was actually glad I had not owned a Ford vehicle in five or so years! Flash of Genius is "Rudy" by another name and genre. It is akin to David slaying Goliath. It's like cresting Everest in flip-flops, shorts, and a t-shirt! Bob Kearns didn't just win against Ford, he exposed their dishonesty, lack of morals, and treachery in front of the world-a far greater, if not impossible, accomplishment. The story is even better because after exhausting all those high minded "justice seeking" lawyers Bob "took out the garbage" and acted as his own legal counsel. Thus when Dr. Kearns won his settlement Ford also had to pay him legal fees which went 100% to his family. The portrayal of these facts just serve to make the story more rich! For me, Greg Kinnear makes this story come to life. He's not overly sympathetic, but he's completely vulnerable as his old life dissolves into a complete need to have Ford give him his rightful compensation. He deftly plays a brittle, though not completely broken, man who has lost everything save his pride regarding his invention. There is a true low-key brilliance at work here, both in the message and the messenger. If you value true life underdog stories where against all odds the protagonist prevails look no further. A very good film overall I'd say.

I'm not gonna spoil the end or anything, I'm just going to talk about the story, that's why I put the spoiler tag up. I'm always afraid when I read the tag "Based on a true story". Most of the times, it isn't that truthful and if it is, it might get boring or some other things go wrong.In this case everything fit together. The performances, the theme, just everything. Greg Kinnear should be nominated at least for his performance/portrayal. That he is fighting for his rights and that you can see the big company treating him wrong and cheating on their contract from a mile off, doesn't matter that much. After that it's the underdog story. And it doesn't even matter how the movie ends, because as the saying goes: The journey is it's own reward!

The David versus Goliath story - with David wielding an Intermittent Windshield Wiper.Antonio Meucci, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Alfred Russell Wallace - all these men had their ideas stolen, only credited years, decades after their ideas had entered the fabric of society under other mens' names: the telephone, Superman, evolution...Who knows how many such men there have been over millennia? The nature of ideas is so amorphous, so inscrutable; "Steal from one man - that's plagiarism. Steal from many men - that's research." FLASH OF GENIUS shows us one of those millions who had his idea stolen, and his principled battle to regain credit for that idea: the intermittent windshield wiper.Hard to believe this function once did not exist - but back in the late 1960s, when all windshield wipers only went OFF and ON, college professor and tinkerer, Robert Kearns (Greg Kinnear, whom we meet - not coincidentally - lecturing on Ethics), hit upon the idea for the "Blinking Eye Windshield Wiper" (with "variable dwell" - that expression kills me!), a wiper that would function like the human eye - whenever it was necessary.He patents the invention (his "Mona Lisa") through his good friend, Gil Privick (Dermot Mulrooney), who owns an auto dealership. He and Gil shop the Blinking Eye to Ford in Detroit, who promptly steal the idea. Because they're a corporation and thus Bad Guys.So begins Kearns's obsessive, decades-long battle, not for money, but for the right to call the invention his; for Ford to admit their outright theft of his patent.In a cute little irony, long before he went head-to-head with Detroit corps, Kearns called his brood of six kids, "The Board of Directors." In a sadder irony, his wife (Lauren Graham) leaves him because with all his time spent on the court case, he was neglecting his kids - the same kids who would years later all end up clustered in his little apartment, helping him win his case! Alan Alda enters the equation briefly as Gregory Lawson, a power lawyer for Kearns, but when he forces a settlement from Ford and Kearns won't accept it unless Ford also acknowledge they stole his idea, Lawson is outa there, but not before warning Kearns of the difference between principled and pragmatic, "Time means nothing to them, money means nothing to them - they will bury you in countersuits, motions, delays; five years from now, you won't be closer to a resolution. Your hair will turn gray..."And he is right.In court, Ford Corp (represented by CEO Mitch Pileggi, among others) claims the idea for an intermittent wiper was in the works anyway and Kearns simply put a few common components together to finalize the design.And he is right.Kearns, who represented himself in court, countered that argument by reading Dickens, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness..." pointing out that Dickens never invented the words themselves, but put them together in such a fashion that he created something new and spanky.And he is right.The beauty of a good story, that happens to be true: every side is right and every side is wrong.Ford would offer Kearns higher and higher sums of money, through their lawyer who looked like a gangster, Charlie Defao (Tim Kelleher), eventually offering 30 million dollars to drop the case, which Kearns and his grown kids (now truly acting like a Board of Directors) refuse - on the grounds that the settlement still did not come with an admission of theft.Well-paced, well-acted, frustrating, inspiring, poignant, FLASH OF GENIUS is a testament to the power of principles, yet a warning as to the cost of holding onto them with white knuckles. Kearns's family life was destroyed, he suffered a mental breakdown and was in a sanitarium for a brief period.Of course Kearns wins - in the usual manipulative inspirational music swell during the court decision - or this movie would not exist. But it is unfortunate that Kearns's fight did not help the plight of all Inventors. We are all aware of those modern clauses in corporate contracts that claim everything from every individual as attributed to that corporation. There are no real inventors left, no single men allowed to claim that flash of genius. Humanity has been swallowed up by The Man.Robert Kearns was one of the last Real Men to fight The Man, squandering his life to retain his Humanity. On variable dwell.--Review by Poffy The Cucumber (for Poffy's Movie Mania).