Gifted

Gifted is the kind of sentimental movie that will go to such great lengths to push your emotional buttons that I eventually had the strong desire to start pushing back in resistance.  It's a real piece of work about a precocious seven-year-old named Mary (played by the very precocious Mckenna Grace), who is skilled with one liners and sharp observations, but is just as skilled with complex mathematics and formulas.  In other words, she's essentially a cross between every smart-mouthed kid you've ever seen on a sitcom, and Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting.

Mary lives alone with her uncle Frank (a scruffy bearded Chris Evans), who has been looking after her ever since her mother (Frank's sister), a math prodigy herself, took her own life.  She's been living in Florida in Frank, along with her treasured pet one-eyed cat, Fred.  But, the time has come to decide what to do with Mary when it comes to school.  Frank knows that the kid is brilliant, but he wants her to go to a "normal school", where she can learn to make friends with other kids.  On the first day of school, Mary is standoffish in class and mouths off to the scary and mean Principal, but she also happens to impress her teacher (comic actress Jenny Slate, giving a rare dramatic performance) with her ability to multiply large equations without the use of a calculator.  The teacher becomes convinced that Mary would thrive in a school for gifted students, but Frank is quick to sway her to his way of thinking that she belongs in her classroom.  Before long, the two are engaged in a halfhearted and unconvincing romantic relationship that serves no dramatic bearing on the story whatsoever.

One day, Mary's grandmother (Frank's mother) unexpectedly shows up.  This is Evelyn (Lindsay Duncan), and she is estranged from Frank, because she thinks that Mary is not living up to her true potential.  I'm not quite sure what role Evelyn is supposed to play in the film, and I'm not quite sure the script knows either.  She's the sort of character who changes her mind and attitude from scene-to-scene.  Sometimes she seems to be softening to the idea of Frank and Mary living together.  But most of the time, she hisses, gnashes her teeth, and is utterly disgusted that her granddaughter is living in Florida, of all places.  She wants to ship the girl off to one of the best schools in the nation, where she can follow in the footsteps of her mother.  Frank obviously can't go along with this idea, so the movie switches gears and goes from being a sentimental family drama about a bright little girl trying to fit into a normal school, to an over wrought courtroom drama.

My heart began to sink when I realized the direction that Gifted was taking.  It's also the point where the movie pretty much drops little Mary, and turns into a lot of scenes where attorneys recite dialogue that must be required in just about every movie ever set in a courtroom, while a somber judge gives appropriate reaction shots whenever there's a revelation, and the camera just happens to be pointed at him.  It's all so contrived and calculated, I almost couldn't believe what I was seeing.  Why couldn't this just be a simple movie about a little girl trying to fit in the world?  Yes, she's obviously bright, but she also is socially awkward and finds it hard to make friends with kids her own age.  The movie touches on this idea, and the characters talk about it once in a while, but it never really explores this issue.  Instead, it turns into a John Grisham-style legal dispute about custody.

This movie starts out being about Mary, then it kind of forgets about her or treats her as a prop, trotting her out once in a while to sing a song with her sassy black friend who lives next door (Octavia Spencer, in a role that feels like it was left largely on the cutting room floor), or to hug Fred the one-eyed cat.  Speaking of the cat, I did not expect it to play such a large part in the climax, where Chris Evans becomes involved in a high-speed race in order to save its life.  Give me a break.  Gifted obviously only wants to please, and has its heart in the right place.  But the whole thing is just so mechanical and contrived, I was able to resist any and all of its forced attempts to win me over.  It's one thing to take a movie about a bright little girl, and turn it into a courtroom melodrama.  But when you throw a cute animal in danger for no reason other than the movie couldn't think of a proper climax, I have to cry foul.

To be fair, the performances are good here, but they are constantly underscored by the manipulative music score that spells out every single emotion that's up there on the screen.  Gifted is a movie that just rubbed me the wrong way.  I have no problem with sentimental films, and have enjoyed a great many of them.  But this movie is kind of shameless at times.

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