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'Proof' is faithful to the Broadway play

Relax.

Theater fans familiar with David Auburn's wily Pulitzer Prize-winning family drama Proof can emit a sigh of relief at the much-delayed, refreshingly faithful film version.

Miramax Films 'Proof' B+ The verdict: Talky but intelligent adaptation of the Broadway play. Director: John Madden Starring: Gwyneth Paltrow, Anthony Hopkins, Jake Gyllenhaal, Hope Davis, Gary Houston Run time: 99 minutes Release date: Sept. 16, 2005 Rating: PG-13 for some sexual content, language and drug references. See showtimes On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate "Proof"   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

Reuniting Gwyneth Paltrow and John Madden, the Oscar-winning star and director of 1998's Shakespeare in Love, the movie makes little attempt to dumb down this tale of a young woman who fears she may have inherited her professor father's mental instability, as well as his genius for mathematics.

Although hardly a botched transfer to the big screen — as the movie first scheduled for release a year ago was assumed to be — Proof still looms as a marketing challenge.

The film is wordy and fairly static, as you might expect from a project with roots in the theater. The screenplay by Auburn (polished by Rebecca Miller of The Ballad of Jack and Rose) makes few efforts to get beyond the play's setting of a Chicago back porch.

By the time we first meet him, Robert (Anthony Hopkins) has died, after years in which his caregiver daughter Catherine (Paltrow) put her own promising math education and career on hold. Now, at 27, the age he started showing signs of mental deterioration, Catherine is unnerved by signs of a similar depressive tendency.

She allows Hal (Jake Gyllenhaal), an ambitious graduate student of her father's, to comb through his largely incoherent notebooks, looking for evidence of any productive work by Robert in his final years. Although wary of Hal, Catherine impulsively sleeps with him, then leads him to a notebook with a groundbreaking, obscure math proof.

In a hurry to verify and publish the proof, Hal is stunned to hear Catherine claim that she, not her father, worked it out. But how does she prove it?

Paltrow gives one of her best performances ever in Proof. She is sullen, snappish, distrustful of all around her, and brimming with an intelligence that she fears will dissolve into madness. Hopkins pops in and out of the film, but he impresses in a climactic scene as he reads from his notebook jottings. In a beefed-up role, Hope Davis (American Splendor) plays Catherine's controlling, parental older sister, a very capable woman even if she possesses none of the family math talent. Gyllenhaal plays Hal in full nerd mode.

Credit Madden with a film that delivers much of the play's impact, perhaps shifting the tone a bit toward the dramatic, away from the unexpected comedy on stage. It would be a shame if Proof's box office becomes a referendum on whether other plays should be adapted to film.