It is said that everyone has a book in them. BOOK, get with the times GRANDAD – everyone has got a film in them right*? What this misses out however is that these books, or films, may not actually be good ones. Take, for example and because it is the film I am actually talking about here, Bob Kearns. Bob Kearns invented the intermittent windscreen wiper. A small college science teacher and small time inventor he cracked the HOLY GRAIL of the car companies. Or so the film Flash Of Genius tells us, the invention of said windscreen wiper is up there with the invention of flight, or that act of petty larceny Prometheus committed.
Its a film with small ambitions. It shows how Bob invented the wiper. It shows how the dastardly car companies nicked it off him. It shows how he became obsessed, went a bit mad and then sued the car companies, took them to court himself and eventually won. I would have warned you of spoilers except there is only one thing in this film which isn’t predictable and that’s the break-up of his marriage. And even that seems to exist more to prove that this is a true story rather than as anything genuinely cinematic.
You get the feeling that somewhere along the line people were told the Bob Kearns story and they said (and I imagine it said over coffee after a slap up meal) “hey that’s so unbelievable you’d think it was a movie”. But really what they meant was it was as predictable as a TV movie, which also makes it feel unrealistic. The challenge of the little man against the might of corporations never wins in real life (except, sometimes it does). An American story about the triumph of the individual spirit against the (unfortunately equally American story of) The Corporation. But Flash Of Genius does not come across as an anti-capitalist film, indeed it inadvertently questions the sacrifices made for this campaign – ironically the one interesting thing about the whole story. Because whilst it is a nice anecdote, and potentially an interesting book, the film flip-flops like and interminable windscreen wiper. Even the poster is boring. Worthy but dull
*GET WITH IT DAD: everyone has a 3D interactive immersive virtual reality skin-fleshie in them.