Bob Kearns drove his family back from church one day during a light rain, unable to see beyond streaking wipes. from his windshield wiper blades. He asked himself, Why couldn't they blink more like an eye, adjusting speed as necessary?"" After tinkering around with his wife's wiper-blade motor in his basement, Bob managed to work out an electronic circuit that could adjust the speed of the wipers at differing levels. The intermittent wiper blade was born.
Thirty years later, Bob could look at nearly any car on the road and see his design at work. Trouble was, he hadn't received a dime for it, much less the credit he deserved. The moment Ford Motor Company got a look at his design, they dumped Bob at the curb and ran away with the design as their own. Bob spent the rest of his life trying to get Ford and the rest of the auto industry to admit they had robbed him of the fruits of his ""flash of genius.""
Bob's story is a compelling one, but the film adaptation of his story, ""Flash of Genius,"" simply fails to capture its namesake. It seems uninspired and predictable, allowing the compelling parts of Bob's story to get whitewashed by the more mundane details of patent law and technical jargon.
The film has serious third act problems. The audience sees the wiper theft coming from the moment Bob (Greg Kinnear) sits down with Ford executives, so Bob's shock is hard for us to feel. We're tossed endlessly from scene to scene, losing sense of what is happening to Bob as he apparently fights to defend his patents on his own, has a nervous breakdown, ruins his relationships with his family and eventually resolves to fight the big corporations again. It puts the film into a tailspin until the last act of the film, when Bob finally gets Ford into a courtroom over the case.
The cast does what it can to make the bumpy story enjoyable and heartfelt. As in ""Little Miss Sunshine,"" Kinnear plays the honest family man stepped on by the business world. As Bob descends into the patent-lined halls of legal hell, he drags his family along with him. Eventually his wife Phyllis (Lauren Graham, ""Gilmore Girls"") leaves him because of the stress, but his kids remain largely loyal, helping Bob as his de facto legal team as he brings the case to trial.
The filmmakers (led by director Marc Abraham) seem afraid to condemn Bob for his failure to set his ego aside and care for his family - the closest they ever get is Phyllis' departure and silent frustration. More scenes of Bob and Phyllis' marriage crumbling would have humanized this otherwise generic David-and-Goliath story covered in a sticky coat of legalese.
Inventors need to be bold and follow their inspiration to create something new - why isn't the story of an inventor equally inspired and fresh?
Grade: C
