If you love rom-coms & want something to cosy you into the winter nights, then hang on...........here comes a 1994 Meg Ryan classic also starring the craziest scientist in the world(or someone who looks like him anyways).
Ed Walters(Tim Robbins) is not a simple garage mechanic, he’s a science geek who never got to go to college.Not thinking much about the rest of the ’sucessful’ world he carries on with his job with the happiest he can be, when suddenly he meets an Englishman & his fiancee struggling to fix a vehicle.Offering to help Ed falls in love at first sight with Catherine Boyd(Meg Ryan), the Britsh man’s fiancee.His friends advise him that a ’scientific’ guy like him can’t pester an already engaged woman to return the same feelings, but he feels an immediate connection & isn’t willing to let it go.As if a sign from the universe, Catherine leaves her unique vintage watch at the garage giving Ed a chance to get close to her.On reaching her house the door gets answered by Albert Einstein(Walter Matthau) who gets Ed to help him with a few chores.Ed learns tht Catherine is Einstein’s niece & a Princeton doctoral candidate.To top it off, her fiancee, James Moreland(Stephen Fry) is an experimental psychology professor.Einstein notices the anxiety in Ed’s face & it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realise the reason for his visiting.Einstein & his friends, who are all fun loving feel James is too boring for Catherine & she doesn’t realise it since she’s never used to thinking with her heart.They offer to turn Ed into a scientist in order to help him impress her.Unfortunately, James isn’t gushing about the new ’scientist’ & it doesn’t take long before he begins questioning Ed’s skills.
The ending is very typical & it won’t take long to figure out what transpires next & who Catherine choses.What makes this a wee bit special though is the subtle feel-good qualities of the scenery, be it the rain or the spring blossoms.The camerawork is simple, yet it makes us notice nature like we’ve never done before.Einstein & his friends prove to be the darlings of the movie with their funfilled activities & jokes.Tim Robbins plays the 1990’s gentlemanly mechanic sweetly to the T, while Meg Ryan is at her usual blonde sweetheart role.
Final grade- A-(I love rom-coms);even if your not into loveable popcorn-commercial-cinema much, this is slightly different & is worth a watch for Einstein & company along with Tim Robbins