Theory of Everything stars Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones reunite for a sweet tale of daredevil balloonists in Victorian England
Some tremendous effects and sweet-natured romantic imaginings lift this Victorian ballooning adventure – as Mary Poppins might have put it – up through the atmosphere, up where the air is clear.
It’s a likably unworldly flight of fancy, or semi-factuality. Tom Harper directs, reuniting Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones, who last appeared together in 2014 as
Stephen Hawking and his wife Jane in The Theory of Everything. Now Redmayne is once again playing a scientist, the real-life pioneer James Glaisher, here dead set on proving to his pompous, mutton-chopped and top-hat-wearing colleagues that meteorology is more than a fad and if he can only get way up in one of these outrageously dangerous hot-air balloons he can make some some serious atmospheric readings. Jones plays a fictional aeronaut, Amelia (as in Earhart) Wren, who finds herself having to help him; she is the brash crowd-pleaser and showbiz flier who basically meets-cute with the primly boyish scientist 40,000 feet up. Wren is given to turning cartwheels in front of cheering crowds before climbing into the balloon’s rickety wicker basket and bringing along her sweet little dog who has his own parachute.