Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Just perfect...

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

The acting in this film is great (Kinnear, as usual, delivers and of added note are Alda's and Mulroney's performances) and while it isn't loaded with explosions and car-chase scenes this is a story everyone can (should?) appreciate. You may even learn something about fundamental electronics as well as our legal system.If you liked Philadelphia, Silkwood, and movies like that, you will enjoy this. Movies where an everyday person (well, in this case, an everyday person with a PhD) has to go up against an ageless & heartless entity like a corporation - in this case Ford Motor Company. Granted, in this movie we do see that Ford was willing to compensate Dr. Kearns but only at the threat of negative publicity and the threat of possibly paying more in damages. If Ford had had its way, they would have happily both lied to Kearns and paid him nothing....ZERO.But this story is about more than just that. This is about believing in something and fighting for it. If it were me, I would've taken the money. Not this man. He fought for what he felt was right even when his family, friends, and attorneys told him to take the cash and be happy about it.This is a good lesson about trusting your heart. How many times do we think, "that just ain't right" but we take the easy way out and laugh it off. Sometimes we just have to fight back. There a lot of bullies out there who sleep well at night after taking advantage of other people everyday. Imagine the feeling of putting them in their place and this guy did it.

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).

Greg Kinnear is Robert Kearns who invented the intermittent windshield wiper and then spent the next bunch of years battling the car companies for patent infringement. Its an amazing story, that would be great film except for the fact that Kearns is a very difficult man to warm to. You understand how his tunnelvision disrupted the life of everyone around him. As good as the film was, and it is an excellent film on all levels, I wanted it to be over so I could know how it came out and I could not have to spend any more time with Kearns. (Kinnear is excellent by the way) I understand why this film isn't better known and why it hasn't caught on since as good as the film is, our hero is almost one note. Try it it may click with you.