Why so much hype?

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

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.

Like other charming and sentimental romantic comedies, this one treads the thin line between the right amount of sentiment and charm, and too much damned sentiment and charm.Mostly it stays upright, only occasionally lapsing into unintentional bathos. Professor Einstein (Mattau) is compelled by convention to suffer a non-heart attack so that he must spend time in his hospital bed, weakly dispensing endorsements while his friends choke back tears. It's a death bed scene although there is nothing wrong with Einstein. Next time we see him he's back on his feet cranking out common sense and wisdom.As for the story, it's not unfamiliar but comes off okay. It's about Einstein promoting the romance between his neice Kathy (Ryan), a mathematical wizard, and a smart but otherwise ordinary garage mechanic (Robbins). She happens to be engaged to an experimental psychologist (Fry) whom everyone seems to dislike because -- well, because he gets in the way of the plot.It has its amusing moments. Robbins, the fake physicist, is trying to take a demanding public test on the subject and is signalled the correct answer by Einstein and his four dwarfs in the audience. Any resemblance to "Ball of Fire" is probably not coincidental. That may be the best scene, as the hospital visit is the worst. The dialog has its sparkle too. "If you had a nickel for every nickel HE has -- you would have a lot of nickels."Matthau gets Einstein down right, a kind of avuncular archetype. Ryan couldn't be cuter. If she were, she'd deliquesce. Robbins, however, is an inexpressive mope and adds little liveliness to a movie that, at times, really needs some -- the kind that Tony Shalhoub brings to the role of the owner and manager of Robbins' work place.

IQ set back in the Fifties is a glorious story of young people in love in an optimistic age. Of course you have to be real optimistic if you think in any age that garage mechanic Tim Robbins is going to get Meg Ryan who is a mathematician. Furthermore she's engaged to a psychologist Stephen Fry who is one real drip as they would have said back in those days. Forgetting Robbins, you've got to wonder what Ryan could possibly see in Fry.Answer is intelligent, she's got the notion that if she marries a smart guy, she'll have smart kids. Believe me, that doesn't always work out. But when she stops at Tony Shalhoub's filling station and their eyes meet you know it's inevitable for Ryan and Robbins.They just need a matchmaker and who better than Uncle Albert. That's Uncle Albert Einstein that is who in his last years was the most distinguished member of the Princeton faculty. So what does Uncle Albert do, to bring Robbins up to her 'level' he has him expound a theory of 'nuclear fusion rocket fuel'. We'll have warp drive and way before Captain Kirk is doing his thing. And Robbins is a bright guy and has a lot of people going including those at the highest level.Walter Matthau plays Einstein and with his scene stealing abilities he dominates the film. Matthau has a set of other elderly professors who look a whole lot like that group writing the encyclopedia in Ball Of Fire. They aid and abet his deception.Someone did a bit of research on Einstein because he admits at the climax to being a poor mathematician. That was true in real life and it's a key point in resolving the whole affair.If you like romantic films and Walter Matthau than IQ is definitely the film for you.

While Fred Schepisi's "I.Q." doesn't really have any important qualities, it's still worth seeing. Walter Matthau plays Albert Einstein, trying to help mechanic Ed Walters (Tim Robbins) fall in love with Princeton mathematics doctoral candidate Catherine Boyd (Meg Ryan). Probably the funniest scene is when Dr. Frizzyhead and friends (Lou Jacobi, Gene Saks and Joseph Maher) try to make Ed look like a scientist: he ends up looking like a French impressionist.Obviously little of the movie is historically accurate, but that's not the point. It's not intended as anything except a light comedy, quite the opposite of Robbins's most famous movie from 1994 (The Shawshank Redemption). A movie about Einstein's whole life would have to focus not only on his scientific achievements, but also his political activism, namely how he wrote a letter on behalf of the Scottsboro Nine and came out against nuclear weapons (it got to the point where the FBI kept a file on him).So anyway, this one is acceptable. Also starring Stephen Fry, Tony Shalhoub, Frank Whaley, Charles Durning and Keene Curtis.

While the sparkling chemistry between Ryan and Robbins alone is reason enough to see this movie, the supporting cast (including Matthau, Fry, Shalub, Durning and the hilarious trio of Jacobi, Saks and Maher) is an additional plus. Matthau shines as Einstein, Fry is perfect as Ryan's clinical fiancé, and Shalub's line about Einstein's gonads is, as has been noted, one of the highlights of the film. The speech that Robbins delivers at his first appearance in public is sheer poetry. Kudos to the writers for handling this froth with wit and levity. I also thought that Keene Curtis was wonderful as Eisenhower. This might be considered something of a chick movie, but I think everyone will get a kick out of it. Eight very solid points.