Movie review: 'Flash of Genius' more a flash in the pan

Imagine "Erin Brockovich," but instead of starring a sexy single mom in a push-up bra, it's about a nerdy college professor. And instead of toxic pollution, it's about who owns the patent to the intermittent windshield wiper. There you have "Flash of Genius," a kamikaze flight of a movie that presents itself like a weighty Oscar contender. If there were a category for Best Unintentional Self-Parody, it would be a shoo-in.

The film is based on the experiences of Bob Kearns, an engineering instructor and part-time inventor whose idea for variable-speed wipers was stolen by the Ford Motor Co. in the 1960s. Kearns was a devout churchgoer, devoted family man and respected member of his community who was swindled by corporate slicksters and represented himself in court against Detroit's sharpest lawyers. Fact-based though it may be, the film is uplifting twaddle, so naive that you might actually feel some affection for its contrivances.

Greg Kinnear plays Kearns as a purebred Dilbert, a conformist who is driven to the edge of madness by pinstriped crooks and their nefarious legal shenanigans. Lauren Graham plays his sickly-sweet wife, who murmurs supportive platitudes early on, but drifts away as Kearns' focus on his grievance becomes an all-consuming obsession. It's the script's only concession to the basic messy human truths of conflicting impulses and ironic consequences. Otherwise the characters and their motivations are as schematic as Kearns' circuitry diagrams.

Kearns presses forward with his Quixotic one-man battle against Ford as if he were a robot programmed to seek justice. Alan Alda has a nice turn as a lawyer who tries to do right by Kearns without being blinded by idealism. He gives the picture some of the charge it needs more of. Kearns puts his family through financial hardships and emotional tension as he pursues his day in court. His wife falls ill from the stress. You sort of hope she'll have some sort of tawdry, life-threatening disease that will add a note of urgency and melodrama, but no; it's just a little case of eczema.

The filmmakers have managed to create the definitive burlesque of anticorporate courtroom dramas without even trying.

Colin Covert • 612-673-7186