He also does everything that he can to make a story that is very obviously about two women and a girl instead about the one man they all share. He makes a few stereotypically male slip ups in his storytelling: calling a strong female character “bossy”, making off-color comments about mistresses, and taking a mildly unsavory stance on consent. That said, I might be giving Tom Flynn too much credit. The story is partly a painful parable about living vicariously through one’s children and partly a nod to the long-lived, ever-changing battle women have fought for their place in STEM fields. The meat of the story is in the grandmother’s zeal for her daughter’s success and then her granddaughter’s promise. Superficially, Gifted is about a young man who is the sole custodian of his sister’s daughter until it becomes apparent that the little girl might be a genius and his mother sues for custody.
But if you were paying even a moderate amount of attention, you should know better. I mean, if you fell asleep for part of the movie, you could be forgiven for thinking such a thing. No, sweet idiot, it did not have a simple plot. I walked out of Gifted loudly bemoaning Chris Evans’ lack of acting skills when I heard a man behind me say something even more controversial: that Gifted suffers from a “simple plot”. The idea of wedging in a potential romance between Frank and Bonnie seems perhaps ill-advised and superfluous, but Slate is so darn likable that I genuinely didn’t mind.Written By: Chris Evans, Mckenna Grace, Octavia Spencer, Jenny Slate, Lindsay Duncan Director Webb makes us care so deeply about Mary’s fate and future that it’s sometimes painful to watch as she and Frank are forced apart briefly. There’s a court case where all the ugly family secrets come out, but before that point, we’re already fully invested in this family nightmare. Her uncle spots the early stages of Mary becoming arrogant around other, less gifted children, and it pains him as he struggles to help her learn patience. Frank and Evelyn are effectively fighting for Mary’s future and her soul.įrank is intent on surrounding Mary with loving, caring people, like Bonnie and their neighbor Roberta (Octavia Spencer), who will expand her world beyond numbers. It turns out the entire family is quite strong in the field of mathematics, and as a result, it tore them apart because Evelyn pushed her children too hard, too early and kept them from having the lives and friendships that most kids get to have. It soon becomes clear that the root of this battle over Mary’s future stems from her absent mother, who was a math genius who committed suicide right after asking Frank to take care of his daughter. Gifted begins to open up as a dramatic force when Frank’s mother Evelyn (Lindsay Duncan) arrives, after a long search for her granddaughter, whom she threatens to take away from Frank if he doesn’t send her to a nearby school that will help Mary develop her already formidable mathematical skills. Her teacher Bonnie (Jenny Slate) brings this fact to Frank’s attention, and he insists that Mary is exactly where she needs to be, for the purposes of giving her something resembling the life of a normal child. When we meet Frank Adler (Chris Evans) and his seven-year-old niece, Mary (McKenna Grace), they live in a small coastal Florida trailer park, where she goes to public school, even though it’s immediately clear that her math skills make her way too smart for any primary school classroom.
The concept of the new film from director Marc Webb ( 500 Days of Summer ) seems deceptively simple but as Tom Flynn’s deft screenplay ( plucked from the 2014 blacklist ) scratches the surface, things get complicated and often painful. Photograph courtesy of Fox Searchlight Pictures
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