Playing Stephen Hawking in 'The Theory of Everything' conveys the best of Eddie Redmayne

Interstellar shouts its ideas about space-time singularity and the power of love into your ear, the better to be heard over its pounding score. The Theory of Everything, the new drama about Stephen and Jane Hawking, takes on similar concepts with a gentle whisper. It nestles into your consciousness with soft lighting and inspiration.

Hawking, of course, is the author of A Brief History of Time, the book that made theoretical physics popular and accessible for the masses. He's also a triumph-of-the-will story: Diagnosed with a motor neuron disease as a doctoral candidate at Cambridge and given two years to live, he went on to do his most important work and soldiers on today at the age of 72.

Eddie Redmayne conveys Hawking's sly sense of humor, and he captures the professor's disability with studious professionalism and a refreshing lack of cliché.

Gawky but charming, the young Hawking falls hard for Jane (Felicity Jones), a romance languages student who sticks by him after he falls ill and ends up in a wheelchair, eventually unable to speak. For much of its first half, The Theory of Everything unfolds as a tale of two noble people doing their best in trying circumstances.

See Stephen earn his degree. See Stephen and Jane have three children. See science explained with beer spilled on a table, cream in a coffee cup and the glowing embers of a fireplace.

We're happy for him, and for her, but a narrative torpor sets in and calcifies. It's hard to imagine anyone strenuously objecting to The Theory of Everything, because nothing very challenging transpires in tone or tale.

Which doesn't make Theory a mere fairy tale of love triumphant. Based on Jane Hawking's book Travelling to Infinity: My Life With Stephen, Theory takes care to show how the strains of a serious illness can muddy the waters of a marriage. Jane grows smitten with her widowed church choir director (Charlie Cox). Stephen drifts toward a doting caretaker (Maxine Peake). Tension should mount here, but it really doesn't. This is the kind of movie that climaxes with a standing ovation you knew was coming two hours ago.

Next up in this movie season of "brilliant people explain dense scientific concepts and fight through personal adversity": The Imitation Game, the story of World War II code-cracker Alan Turing. Don't blame it for a title that feels more apt by the week.