Some plays are never meant to be adapted onto the big screen. David Auburn wrote a very powerful Pulitzer-prize winner and as result, it became another drab, drippy Gwyneth Paltrow starring vehicle. It's a shameful disposition that everyone will forget about the play and will only remember this slushy film directed by John Madden ("Shakespeare in Love"). The final product consists of a cornucopia of of tiresome compromises and an abundance of cuts that will leave you scratching your heads.There are many reasons why "Proof" lacks life but there are two main faults that stand out more than the others. Firstly, Paltrow is forced to play an emotionally distraught lady which can be described as a role that's outside her parameters in her acting. If you remember her "Sylvia" she plays a brilliant poet with suicidal tendencies who came across as a level-headed person who's penmanship is virtually flawless. Here in "Proof", she's once again playing a harried person who's a mathematical wiz who fears she might be losing her mind. Once again she keeps her sanity in tact while hiding her feelings from the public.Though she's a very intelligent person and hasn't become full-blown insane as we speak, but her moods tell a completely different story. Calling on someone who's about to breakdown, her emotions stem from morose, frustrated, depressed and drab. There's really no emotional changes in character and what you see in her character is what you get. She's either sad, very sad, full-blown moody and just plain frustrated about her depressions. There's really no feel-good about this movie at all.The other thing that irked me the most about "Proof" is that director John Madden just ignored the elements that this movie started as a play and making it lost the roots that it started from. If Madden wanted to open up the story like he did, more panache could have been necessary and opened up more to the audience to get their attention. What he gives us are a bunch of snippets of pointless soundtrack intervals with Catherine (Paltrow) riding her bicycle that lack in point or significance to the movie and just drags on the dramatic tensions this movie has in store for us.From the beginning, Auburn was not really given much creative control since he was under the collaboration of Rebecca Miller. Since he knew his characters better than any of the other crew members, it would've been wiser if he chose a director who was more adept in technique. Instead the script was under the pen of a mundane writer whose previous work is featured in other films.In following the tradition of the original play, the setting takes plays days after the death of Robert (Anthony Hopkins) who was a brilliant mathematician who's final years was spent fighting a mental illness. We're first introduced to him while talking to his daughter, Catherine on her 27th birthday. But she acknowledges that he's deceased. He seems passive about it, which indicates that he's probably just a manifestation in her mind.The rest of the supporting cast includes Jake Gyllenhaal as graduate student Hal who starts digging through Robert's archives. And there's Hope Davis who plays Catherine's estranged sister Claire who makes it her initiative to become a prominent guardian to Catherine. Claire might be the closest to being the leading antagonist. Sure the sympathy is towards Catherine, but her character is so drippy, I find it hard to feel in every way sorry for her. Not only is she bit cuckoo at times, there are moments where she just creeps me out at times.The script has some memorable scenes like funeral eulogy that has a negative impact on Catherine that never fully contributes to the movie. The title of the movie stems from the esoteric mathematical breakthrough found in his desk. The penmanship whether it will ever be revealed is the climax of the story. However, it's the scenes where Catherine's flashbacks and hallucinations that really stand out. The father\daughter chemistry between Paltrow and Hopkins truly stand-out. If only David Auburn had more creative control, this movie could've been all the more better.

The Iron Maiden (what else notable has she done but Iron Man in the intervening years?) in a terrific performance as the daughter of a John Nash-like genius schizophrenic mathematician -- a daughter who may have inherited her father's outsized intellect as well as his affliction. We're never sure and neither is the character. Hope Davis is equally terrific as her well-meaning, less talented, clueless, "normal" sister who's trying to help, but paints her sister as crazy like their father and is trying to force her to live life inside a box labeled "crazy". It's a fascinating study of a woman who's a genius and a difficult personality being labeled and treated as though she were not all there. Nobody seems to believe she's sane, not even her. But frankly, the Davis character's over-solicitousness would make anyone doubt their own sanity. The scenes with Paltrow and Davis make you believe they really might be sisters. Their tone is pitch perfect.I thoroughly enjoyed it, but be warned it's not an action movie, or one with an intricate plot. Instead, it examines how genius and insanity often can't be distinguished from each other and might well be two sides of the same coin.

Proof really fell short for a few major reasons: 1. Lack of suspenseThere was no doubt in my mind for the whole movie that Catherine had written the proof so the movie just ended up being exceedingly boring.2. Over-acting by Gwyneth Paltrow I was really surprised to see that many people thought that she deserved an Oscar for this movie. Her constant mental break downs were unrealistic and were basically for no reason. Her character was supposed to be extremely intelligent, but she ran on emotions and was completely irrational. She just struck me as a really annoying, selfish, and extreme character whose emotions seemed very forced.3. Bad castingSeriously? Jake Gyllenhaal as a math geek who is desperate for a girl? Realistically, I thought Jake was too attractive to put up with verbal abuse from an emotionally unstable Catherine when he could get basically any other girl he wanted. I really didn't understand why he liked her to begin with, she treated him badly the entire movie.4. Unnecessary switching between past and presentThis added no suspense or anything special to the story.5. No math in the movie......despite the fact that it was a movie about math.6. The cringe-worthy love scenes Catherine is constantly crying and accusatory toward Hal even in the "cute moments" in the movie. I just found that it didn't really work and seemed unrealistic.A few bright sides:1. Anthony Hopkins was brilliant.2. I thought Hope Davis played the self-absorbed sister role very well.

Proof is a movie that has themes on genius and madness wherein a woman struggles to come to terms with the potentially dangerous legacy of her late father.It stars Gwyneth Paltrow, Anthony Hopkins, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Hope Davis. It was written by Rebecca Miller, which was based on David Auburn's Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same title. John Madden directed the said feature. Catherine is a woman in her late twenties who is strongly devoted to her father, Robert, a brilliant and well-known mathematician. While Robert's skill in the world of numbers still appears to be strong, his grip on reality begins to slip away, and as he descends into madness, she begins to wonder if she may have inherited her father's mental illness along with his mathematical genius. After his father's passing, she is confronted by Hal, a gifted but zealous student of Robert's who wants to look through the late man's notes in hopes of finding his last great work. While she is hesitant to look too deeply into her father's work for fear of what it might suggest about her own future, she allows him to do so, and when one notebook reveals a mathematical proof of potentially historic proportions, it sets off shock waves in more ways than one.Intense and compelling, it is an absorbing film that shows the intricacies of the human mind are as complex as a mathematical equation. It is an extraordinary play adaptation about matters of scholarship and the heart, about the true authorship of a mathematical proof and the passions that coil around it. The play, with all of its key surprises and biting exchanges intact, is up there on the screen. But given the depth and fascinating pull of Auburn's writing, that's a good thing as themes of trust, the depth of filial responsibility and concerns about genetic inheritances are explored with intelligence.Added to that,it explores issues of love, trust and family wonderfully through the inner life and ironic wit of Catherine.Paltrow and Hopkins give exceptional performances in a film that intelligently tackles the territory between madness and genius. Davis and Gyllenhaal complete a dream cast. Overall,Proof now joins 1984's Amadeus, 1985's made-for-television version of Death of a Salesman and 1988's Dangerous Liaisons on the list of the best modern movie adaptations in recent years.