Paltrow's Intensity Takes the Humor Out of Proof

Upon its publication in 2002, Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything Is Illuminated dazzled critics and young readers, who immediately declared it required reading for a new generation struggling to comprehend the haunting legacy of the Holocaust. The book's success naturally led to a movie adaptation, but since the best part of the novel is its bravura display of linguistic innovation, there were undoubtedly innumerable difficulties in translating it to screen. And it shows. Despite a screenplay by the talented Liev Schreiber, this film comes across as a lobotomized version of the entertaining, intelligent and moving novel. Granted, it would be impossible to make a coherent film that jumps around from past to present over two hundred centuries as the book does, but did Schreiber really have to reduce the plot to a buddy road-trip story?
Elijah Wood plays the protagonist, a young Jewish American named Jonathan Safran Foer, who sets out looking for the woman who saved his grandfather in the Holocaust. His guide is a hoary old man (Boris Leskin) accompanied by his beloved dog, Sammy Davis Jr. Jr., and his translator, the inimitable Alex (Eugene Hutz), a blinged-out Ukrainian teen who says things like "I dispense too much currency. Are you carnal with many women?" From Alex's comic montage to Safran Foer's Ziploc-bag collection of family memorabilia, Schreiber tries hard to highlight the quirkiness of the characters and their circumstances. Unfortunately, as our band of travelers hurtles into the darker recesses of memory and history, the film buckles under the weight of its monumental undertaking. Despite the excellent Leskin's best efforts, Wood's subpar acting only adds to the improbable moments that are supposed to be moving but wind up gag-inducing. Never removing his undertaker outfit, Wood deadpans every line and emotes only with his ever-widening puppy dog eyes.
For those who cherish the novel, this adaptation is a disingenuous flattening of vivid literary antiheroes; for those who don't know the story, don't bother with this overambitious, underperformed cliche of a film.