Like other charming and sentimental romantic comedies, this one treads the thin line between the right amount of sentiment and charm, and too much damned sentiment and charm.
Mostly it stays upright, only occasionally lapsing into unintentional bathos. Professor Einstein (Mattau) is compelled by convention to suffer a non-heart attack so that he must spend time in his hospital bed, weakly dispensing endorsements while his friends choke back tears. It's a death bed scene although there is nothing wrong with Einstein. Next time we see him he's back on his feet cranking out common sense and wisdom.
As for the story, it's not unfamiliar but comes off okay. It's about Einstein promoting the romance between his neice Kathy (Ryan), a mathematical wizard, and a smart but otherwise ordinary garage mechanic (Robbins). She happens to be engaged to an experimental psychologist (Fry) whom everyone seems to dislike because -- well, because he gets in the way of the plot.
It has its amusing moments. Robbins, the fake physicist, is trying to take a demanding public test on the subject and is signalled the correct answer by Einstein and his four dwarfs in the audience. Any resemblance to "Ball of Fire" is probably not coincidental. That may be the best scene, as the hospital visit is the worst. The dialog has its sparkle too. "If you had a nickel for every nickel HE has -- you would have a lot of nickels."
Matthau gets Einstein down right, a kind of avuncular archetype. Ryan couldn't be cuter. If she were, she'd deliquesce. Robbins, however, is an inexpressive mope and adds little liveliness to a movie that, at times, really needs some -- the kind that Tony Shalhoub brings to the role of the owner and manager of Robbins' work place.
Mostly it stays upright, only occasionally lapsing into unintentional bathos. Professor Einstein (Mattau) is compelled by convention to suffer a non-heart attack so that he must spend time in his hospital bed, weakly dispensing endorsements while his friends choke back tears. It's a death bed scene although there is nothing wrong with Einstein. Next time we see him he's back on his feet cranking out common sense and wisdom.
As for the story, it's not unfamiliar but comes off okay. It's about Einstein promoting the romance between his neice Kathy (Ryan), a mathematical wizard, and a smart but otherwise ordinary garage mechanic (Robbins). She happens to be engaged to an experimental psychologist (Fry) whom everyone seems to dislike because -- well, because he gets in the way of the plot.
It has its amusing moments. Robbins, the fake physicist, is trying to take a demanding public test on the subject and is signalled the correct answer by Einstein and his four dwarfs in the audience. Any resemblance to "Ball of Fire" is probably not coincidental. That may be the best scene, as the hospital visit is the worst. The dialog has its sparkle too. "If you had a nickel for every nickel HE has -- you would have a lot of nickels."
Matthau gets Einstein down right, a kind of avuncular archetype. Ryan couldn't be cuter. If she were, she'd deliquesce. Robbins, however, is an inexpressive mope and adds little liveliness to a movie that, at times, really needs some -- the kind that Tony Shalhoub brings to the role of the owner and manager of Robbins' work place.