DVD Review: Flash of Genius

If you decide to actually rent Flash of Genius (you shouldn’t), I can almost guarantee that you’ll be taken back to memories of grade or even high school when your teacher made your class watch a movie instead of actually teaching something for 2, maybe even 3 classes if everyone was lucky.

It gave your poor teacher a chance to fuck another married teacher in the lounge. After that 5 minutes was up they would bet on which students would or wouldn’t graduate and who’d be pathetic enough to actually stay in the town they went to High School in.

It gave you the opportunity to check out whether cheerleader Mary Lou McSwaney was stuffing her bra (she wasn’t) or if Dirk Gooniebob III, captain of the football team, was stuffing his pants (he was).

The point being, nobody was watching the movie. Why? Because it was fucking boring. Because it hammered a MESSAGE that nobody wanted to listen to unless it was something that also entertained you. Because it gave you a chance to actually close your eyes during class instead of pretending you actually cared about what the teacher was saying. Because there was no nudity and very little swearing.

I’ll give you some examples from my personal school career of shit that I was forced to watch because it was deemed “important” or “scholastically relevant”. I’m sure you have your own crappy school movies downloaded into your memory card. Sure, occasionally they threw in Mississippi Burning or JFK, but mostly we got stuff like-

Listen to Me- Yeah, that movie with Kirk Cameron (if you don’t know who he is just Google the words “Has-been” and siphon through the tags “Feldman” and “Haim”, you’ll find a picture of him with a cup of change outside of Leonardo DiCaprio’s mansion) and Jamie Gertz about debate and abortion. It’s also one of the worst movies of the 80’s. I think that’s also why I remember watching it during school because the movie critic inside me waiting to bust out like Alien knew that what we were watching was bad beyond words and to show it during school hours made me question even more the quality of education I was receiving...

Fat Man and Little Boy- I think this was in a History class and it was relevant because it was about the atomic bomb. How can a movie with Paul Newman, Laura Dern and John Cusack be horrible? Watch this and witness the aftermath

You get the idea...and coming to a classroom near you: Flash of Genius. So if you don’t feel like renting it and you have kids, don’t worry because they’ll be forced to watch this soon enough and tell you how boring it is. If you’re in school now, be sure to hide your iPOD somewhere subtle.

Flash of Genius is the true inspifuckingrational story about the guy that invented the Intermittent Windshield Wiper. Yes, it’s a movie that centers on the invention of a windshield wiper, and yes, it’s about as exciting as it sounds.

It’s the 1940’s in Detroit, Michigan and Dr. Robert Kearns (Greg Kinnear) is an ordinary ex-Canadian Porn star with 6 kids, a doting wife Phyllis (Lauren Graham), and a decent job as a college professor, although with 6 kids no job is really all that decent unless you’re also dealing on the side. He and his family are driving in the rain and he keeps fiddling with the wipers because back then they worked by turning a knob each individual time you wanted to wipe your windshield. Tedious, very tedious.

Bob is a mechanical nerd, a tinkerer, and has an idea in which he could make it so you could just turn on one switch and the wipers could go on all night and all day if they had to. Phyllis wishes she had one of those mechanisms for her vibrator.

And in proper montage fashion...he invents it. And what’s more, there’s even a device where you can alter the wiper’s speeds depending on the amount of rain falling.

(Wow!!! That’s fucking awesome!!! Tell me more about this true life story, because I can’t think of ANYTHING more exciting than a 2 hour movie about Windshield Wipers. Maybe as a double feature we could have Richard Attenborough movie about the evolution of the eraser or Kate Winslet in a movie an illiterate rodeo clown)

There, there, Inner Monologue, contain your excitement because there’s so much more to tell...

(Ooohhhh...I can’t WAIT!!! This is about as exciting as when I stalked Robert Pattinson in his hotel room, beat the shit out of him, cut off all his hair and then sold that hair to teenagers with low self esteem at $17 a strand. Kirsten Stewart helped me do it and only took a $5 cut)

Kearns and his lawyer friend Gil (Dermot Mulroney- the actor, not the disease e.g. “Doc, I’ve got this awful rash, I think it’s my Dermot Mulroney acting up again”) take the invention to a little car company called Ford. Kearns wants to manufacture the Wiper exclusively, which is not usually the way the Ford Company does business, but since the Intermittent Wiper is such a success, they’ll do it anyway because it means millions for them all and then Ford is one step closer to taking over the megaverse

And then the world crashes all around him. Ford calls a couple of months later and tells Kearns that they are no longer interested in the Wiper. What the Fuck!!! Because they need money, Kearns decides to sell another one of his kids to Angelina Jolie (they used to have 11 kids whittled now down to 5).

Months later, Kearns sees Ford cars equipped with the New Wiper...and realizes that the Ford people have stolen his idea, and haven’t paid him jackshit. There goes another kid to Brad Pitt.

(Those Ford BASTARDS!!! What does Kearns do? Does he fight the good fight overcoming insurmountable odds, armed only with a couple of law books, the unyielding love of his wife and kids, and the knowledge that God and Sunny Jesus are on his side? Do we get stirring courtroom scenes with one side having 15 Ford lawyers and on the other side Kearns there with his son and his one awkwardly fitting suit that he keeps on having to rewash?)

No, Inner Monologue, this is a true story, and real life doesn’t always have happy endings like in the movies.

What happens is that the Ford Harassment Division (FHD) begins burning crosses on his front lawn. After a while, because of an error in data processing, the FHD realize that Kearns is as white as the lines 2Snaps.tv readers rail right before clicking on to the site and burning crosses seems pointless

(Oh, the Humanity!!! Such unjust injustice!!! Will truly just justice ever prevail?!!! I’m on the edge of my seat!!! This is truly exciting cinema, all the more exhilarating because it’s true!!!)

But Kearns persists, and the FHD break into his house and beat and rape him, not because of his lawsuit and unwillingness to take settlements, but because Greg Kinnear appeared in Little Miss Sunshine. Millions of movie fans cheer on and even join in, payback for the 2 hours they wasted watching that fucking movie

(Golly, doesn’t the lone man eventually triumph over the corrupt system? Do they end up having to shoot the family dog for lack of food? Or does Phyllis end up being a pole dancer giving handjobs to orphans and going by the stage name Si-Phyllis?)

Nope, although that handjob-to-orphans thing may have some validity. The FHD eventually burn the Kearns house down while he and his family are sleeping and they all perish except for one child, Bruce, who watches his family die and now lives with the family butler Alfred where he awaits his chance for revenge against the Ford company.

(That’s a bummer...)

I’m just kidding. All the stuff that would actually look cool in a movie never happened and all the dull predictable stuff that you’d normally see in an afterschool special happens and we’re bored but better off for it. I guess...

(Yeah!!! I’m so happy that the Ford Company didn’t burn the Kearns’ house with the Kearns’ family still in it...)

We learn in during the closing credits that the FHD, due to another error in data processing, burned the Kearns’ neighbors’ house, the Litkes, and that THEY were actually incinerated while they slept. None of the Litkes survived, and other neighbors heard them screaming for hours before they finally perished but shut the windows because it was just too much racket. There was an impromptu neighborhood barbecue before the firefighters arrived 2 hours later. This is Detroit, after all...

(But the Kearns family lived and triumphed!!! YEAH!!!)

What works about Flash of Genius-

1) In a scene that breaks the monotony of most of the movie, Robert extracts a wiper unit. Problem is...the car doesn’t belong to him.

2) Lauren Graham takes the stock character of the dutiful wife and manages to make her stand out in a positive way. Too bad her character disappears for most of the 3rd act. We in the audience wish we could go with her so we don’t have to stay for the end either.

3) Mitch Pileggi (Agent Skinner from the X-Files) has a moment where his character stands and smokes a cigarette, much like a certain Cigarette smoking man would.

4) Greg Kinnear cross examining...himself.

5) The part where Clint Eastwood beats the rice out of that fat Asian gangster for messing with his friend Thao. Sorry, wrong movie involving a car.

It’s okay...I’m Asian, I can say stuff like “beats the rice” and not have it construed as being racist just as long as it’s about other Asians (see: Miley Cyrus fiasco- I can do what she did and it’s funny...but an anorexic white girl does it and the fecal matter flies). Just like black people can say the N word and not get killed and white people have all those tax breaks. I just can’t (if you read the Taken review) say anything about Albania, and risk offending 2Snaps’ one Albanian reader (has nobody EVER seen Wag the Dog?). Don’t worry, 2Snaps is sending me on a trip to Albania as part of my sensitivity training. I’m looking forward to the trip because I’ve always wanted to visit the Grand Canyon and Epcot Center.

6) Alan Alda’s small role as a brilliant, though realistic attorney handling the Kearns’ case. In 10 minutes he makes his character more interesting than most of the 2 hours you spend with Kinnear’s.

What doesn’t work-

1) There’s nothing in this movie that isn’t generic or inspiration-by-numbers. You’ve seen thousands of movies like this done much better.

2) Daytime Soap operas and Judge Judy handle courtroom scenes better.

3) Yes, there is that now-laughable scene where the wife tells her determined husband “You’re neglecting your kids”, and the husband sighs, exasperated, and replies “I’m doing it FOR my kids”. You the audience grow big fat rubbery ones and roll your eyes.

4) There’s a scene where an entire mob of white people are dancing at a party that’s actually scarier than anything you’d seen in that new Friday the 13th remake. It’s horrific beyond words and is more disturbing than any real-life injustice that takes place during the film. White people, when you’re in large groups, please don’t dance.

Overall. If you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve seen the movie, except you haven’t lost 2 hours of your life. Is it a bad movie? Not really, just lifeless and there’s nothing really compelling enough about it to warrant wasting your time to watch it when you can just go to Wikipedia and read about it in a fraction of the time.

BTW- The Dark Knight writer/director Christopher Nolan has announced that he, Jonathan Nolan and David Goyer have completed the Script for the 3rd Batman, and it will take place during the Holocaust and there’ll be a tearful scene where Bruce Wayne will reveal that he never learned to read and has a scorching case of Dermot Mulroney in his crotch. Lena Olin will make a small appearance as a Psychiatrist who blows him and applies Anti-Dermot Mulroney Cream. This will ensure that the 3rd Batman will not get Fisted at the Oscars like The Dark Knight was this year. Can’t wait for that...