Akiva Goldsman’s scripts work best when actors have room to make people complicated. Too often, explanation and reassurance take over; his shared work on Fringe gives us more to recommend than most of the films we have reviewed.
Fi1m perspective
In Batman & Robin (1997), Batman and Robin have plenty to say to each other, but little that makes their partnership worth following. Akiva Goldsman can keep dialogue coming long after it has stopped telling us anything useful about the people speaking. His early work with director Joel Schumacher included the adaptations The Client (1994) and A Time to Kill (1996), alongside Batman Forever (1995). In Batman & Robin, the inventive sets and an amusing Uma Thurman give us pleasures the central partnership cannot supply.
A Beautiful Mind (2001), directed by Ron Howard, is more rewarding, though Goldsman’s wish to reassure us limits it. We were moved by Jennifer Connelly’s Alicia Nash because she made the effort of understanding her husband feel like work that would need doing again tomorrow. The screenplay too often treats her as a source of comfort for Nash when her own experience deserves attention. It also spends more time establishing his exceptional ability than helping us understand why the mathematics matters. Further adaptations with Howard included The Da Vinci Code (2006) and Angels & Demons (2009).
His work as a writer and director on Fringe (2008) gives us considerably more to recommend. He is one contributor to a large production, and its success cannot be claimed for his writing alone. As a director, working alongside Brad Anderson and others, he helps keep the cases brisk while giving the laboratory scenes time. John Noble’s Walter Bishop benefits from that patience. The programme takes most of a season to find its purpose, but allowing Walter time makes its warmth convincing.
Practical Magic 2 (2026), written with Georgia Pritchett and directed by Susanne Bier, returns to the less satisfying habit of making characters explain too much. The family curse and expanded magical history produce a thin, tangled story, while the sentiment becomes sugary. Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman remain convincing sisters, but their warmth has to compensate for awkward material. We would rather see Goldsman give the performers more room than supply another explanation. Start with Fringe, allowing for a first season that takes too long to settle.
Biography
Akiva Goldsman is an American screenwriter, producer and director. Born in New York City on 7 July 1962, he graduated from Wesleyan University and attended New York University’s graduate fiction-writing programme.
His screenwriting credits include Batman Forever (1995), Practical Magic (1998) and its sequel Practical Magic 2 (2026), A Beautiful Mind (2001), for which he received the Academy Award and Golden Globe for Best Adapted Screenplay, I, Robot (2004), The Da Vinci Code (2006), I Am Legend (2007) and Angels & Demons (2009). He has also worked extensively in television as co-creator of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and co-developer of Star Trek: Picard and the series Titans.
