It’s hard as algebra to find a more charming, feel good movie than GIFTED.
Featuring Fred the monocular moggie, a cute kid maths prodigy, a hunky uncle and a wicked witch from the east, GIFTED is a tacit custody tussle with a controlled tear jerking muscle from the gifted penmanship of screenwriter Tom Flynn.
A Beautiful Mind out of Kramer vs Kramer, GIFTED gifts us Chris Evans as Frank Adler, a single man raising his spirited young niece Mary, played by Mckenna Grace, in a coastal town in Florida. Mary is a brilliant child prodigy and Frank’s intention that she lead a normal life are thwarted when the seven year old’s command of mathematics comes to the attention of his formidable mother Evelyn, a brilliant portrayal by the formidable Lindsay Duncan.
Yes, there’s an aspect of the formulaic but when the formula is tinctured with a prodigious wit and electrifying eloquence as it is here, it transforms and transcends the usual, the predictable and the mundane. The eloquence quotient equates to a product of profound provocation, the solution of satisfactorily addressing the needs of gifted children. Achieving the balance between academic stimulus and social stagnation is at the heart of this story, and the conflict is calculated and calibrated to a very fine point.
The cast is exemplary.
McKenna Grace is a revelation as Mary, precocious to the precipice of bratty, adorable and forthright, a genius yet still very much the little girl.
Chris Evans as Frank, his Captain America physique explained by his job, outdoor manual labouring fixing boats, is layback, liberal and stoically shouldering the responsibility of raring his young charge. He is faced with the dilemma of shielding his niece from the interest her stupendous intellect will provoke but allowing her a normal childhood, at a normal school, interacting with normal children.
Acting chops incalculable by normal thesp scales are showcased by Lindsay Duncan, the mathematical matriarch, the granny who prizes genius over foolish juvenilia, quite prepared to arrest emotional and social development in her granddaughter for the greater good – accomplishment and accolades of advanced arithmetic. Her courtroom scenes are candescent, cool and killing.
Compounding a sum total of supporting superiority is Jenny Slate as Bonnie, the primary school teacher who attracts both Frank and Mary’s affections and Octavia Spencer as a confederate neighbour. And don’t forget the one pupil pussy, Fred, who is the catalyst to the film’s satisfying finale.
Beautifully shot by Stuart Dryburgh, the cinematographer of The Piano and Once Were Warriors, GIFTED is unobtrusively wrapped by director Marc Webb. It’s a motion picture present to cherish.
