The daughter of a brilliant mathematician must convince her new beau and her domineering sister that she wrote an important mathematical document. We don't care about the proof, the film's main source of conflict; director John Madden knows few in the audience are smart enough to care about theoretical math and physics. So what's left? Proof has to compel us with the interpersonal drama Catherine's relationship with her dead father and her sister and boyfriend who grow to doubt her sanity. But from very early on, we know there's no reason to doubt Catherine, so we're left waiting for the film to catch up to the audience, and thus the film loses its reason to compel us to care about these characters. Gwyneth Paltrow, who conjures her Sylvia character in her depressive moments, occasionally gives us reason to pay attention to Catherine's struggles, but especially when she raises her voice, Catherine, in Paltrow's hands, comes off as annoyingly disinterested and unengaged with manic bouts of petulance. It's hard to like Paltrow, and it's even harder to be interested in Catherine. Overall, I found Proof to be structurally flawed, and the film's star certainly didn't shine.

This film has so much going for it. Gwyneth Paltrow plays the lead role, Anthony Hopkins is a minor, but important, supporting character, and the premise has tons of potential. This film wants so bad to be "A Beautiful Mind", but it has some serious problems with the direction its plot moves. Everything about the story begs for less Jake Gyllenhaal, who wasn't bad, and Hope Davis, who was awful every time she was on screen. Their characters are given far too much focus. Paltrow's character, the ostensibly interesting, complex protagonist, is still a mystery to the viewer by the end of the film. The story begs to go in one direction but the plot strays away. It's not a *bad* film, but it's certainly not a good one. I didn't love "A Beautful Mind", but at least that film had a good idea of how this type of story needs to be told.