I.Q. (1994)

Excellent but underrated film

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Catherine Boyd (Meg Ryan) is the niece of Albert Einstein (Walter Matthau) and engaged to pompous professor James Moreland (Stephen Fry). Catherine and James start having car trouble. Ed Walters (Tim Robbins), Bob Rosetti (Tony Shalhoub), and Frank (Frank Whaley) are working in the garage. Ed falls head over heels for Catherine. Einstein intervenes with his scientist friends Nathan Liebknecht (Joseph Maher), Kurt Gödel (Lou Jacobi), and Boris Podolsky (Gene Saks) to perfect a Grand Design. Louis Bamberger (Charles Durning) is the head of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.The rom-com formula is often derided but there is a reason why everyone keeps repeating it. Catherine and Ed need much more heat in their first meeting. The romance is too one-sided and sputters along. They really don't have enough time together. Even queen Meg Ryan cannot drive this rom-com at full speed. Ed spends more time with Einstein than her. The standout is Walter Matthau and his gang of elderly gentlemen. They are fun and able to deliver a few funny moments. It's more of a hybrid between a rom-com and a buddy movie. This sorta works and has some fun doing it.

A comedy of sorts, and yet a dream more than a real story. Why not? We have the right to dream, even about real life. A band of old German scientists who have found refuge in the US because they were Jewish, among whom Albert Einstein is the most prestigious, are enjoying the love that is nascent in Einstein's niece for a simple garage mechanic and they organize a prank to make him shine with the highest IQ possible, and since when you reach a certain level of intelligence nothing is impossible, those four men manage to make the young mathematician niece fall in love top over toes in all directions and she finally recognizes that love is probably more important in life than just mathematics and science and university and research. The rest is Jewish antics and humor about life and death, love and the unknowable, the mind, the spirit, the soul, the brain, or whatever is residing up there in the skull. Some say love is not always on time, and they are wrong because love is always on time for those who believe time does not exist, and they are numerous since time, you know, hours, minutes, seconds and weeks and months are nothing but a human intellectual construction on the basis of the experience of the duration of things that cannot be measured and is absolutely as regular as a clock that is speeding up going up and slowing down going down, or vice versa. And love is the compass that can keep you on the right road in the right direction towards the right destination that you may never reach because distance is like duration: it is unfathomable and infinite.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID

This was a great romantic comedy! Historically inaccurate (Einstein had no nieces or nephews as noted elsewhere in IMDb) but he made a great matchmaker. He brought together two very nice people played by two of the best actors working. The supporting cast (Lou Jacobi, Joseph Maher, Gene Saks, Stephen Fry, etc.) all clicked on screen and made this a great viewing experience. The fact he drove a car to get around seems to contradict all those images and posters of him riding a bicycle to get around. And did he wear socks in one scene...reportedly, the professor never wore socks! (Two new entries for the IMDb goofs section.) Historical inaccuracies and inconsistencies aside, this was a great movie to watch with a great cast. I give it an 8!

Typically stupid modern American comedy. The language and sensibility are 1990s while using 1950s props and a mix of hair styles and clothes from whatever era. They should have left it in the 90s and made it Dr. Salk. Too bad because it is a good cast. Feels like it was written by teenagers. Two stars at best.It's really too bad because there are some scenes that begin quite cleverly and then fall very flat, not the actors fault really, it's just so poorly done. The movie tries desperately to be a throwback to some of the fun comedies made in the late 40s-early 50s...Monkey Business comes to mind, maybe even A Song is Born. All in all quite forgettable.