Does "Creation" lack the spark of genius?

That's the conclusion my colleague John Travis, European Editor of Science, comes to about this otherwise laudable attempt to portray the human side of Charles Darwin, in a new film that has yet to find a distributor in the United States. John reviews the film for Science's Origins blog, and it is clear that he wished he could have liked it more:

According to the movie’s press material, the film portrays the “powerful story of Charles Darwin and the single most explosive idea in history. … In Creation, the battleground is a man’s heart. Torn between his love for his deeply religious wife and his own growing belief in a world where God has no place, Darwin finds himself caught in a struggle between faith and reason, love and truth.” What this ultimately means is that the movie centers on why Darwin was so slow to publish On the Origin of Species, attributing the delay to his illness, his grief, and his desire not to offend the world, or at least his wife. In other words, instead of dramatizing how Darwin traveled the world and arrived at the most explosive idea in history, Creation is ultimately about the world’s biggest case of writer’s block.

That's just one paragraph from John's insightful review, please read the rest. Oh, and if you live in the United States, do lobby for its distribution in a cinema near you. The film may be flawed, but not as flawed as the arguments of the creationists who would love to see it suppressed.