An anemically-scripted TV movie made from a decent book that takes a sophisticated exploration of the nature of intelligence and turns it into a movie about how dumb people are actually better than smart people because dumb people love more. Or something like that. Matthew Modine is good as Charlie, and Bonnie Bedelia is very good as Charlie's mother Rose.

Very shitty adaptation of a mediocre story. They inject insanely stupid, soap opera level musings about love that were never there in the original, with "intelligence doesn't mean a damn without the heart!" being the best example. If that's so, why does everyone in the movie value brains so highly until the very end, and why is it that only after becoming smart does Charlie win over his teacher? Is the idea that intelligence is VITAL to feelings of love beyond the idiots who made this nonsense?