Gifted

Bad Will, Hunting
or
♪How Do You Solve a Problem Like a Math-Whiz?♫

Marc Webb, did the very enjoyable (500) Days of Summer, a film I very much admire. He parlayed that success into a journey to Big Budget Marvel-land, where he directed the re-booted and re-webbed "Spider-man" franchise, making it "The Amazing" Spider-man (I and II), with Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone. The first one worked like gang-busters, but the second one suffered from "super-villain bloat" and a commitment to the infamous "Gwen Stacy Syndrome" story-line of the comics. Whatever, the reason, the box-office fell off a bit and intended plans for an "Amazing Spider-man III" were "Green-Lit No More!"*

One of the things I've read directors say after they've done a taxing blockbuster is "Next, I want to do a simple love story with just two people..." Rarely happens. But, Webb is a sharp talent with good instincts and his first post-spider-film film is, if not terribly inspired, terrifically realized in the directorial sense, showing that, as a director, he hasn't lost his touch with casting, directing, and of the off-beat, all things proven in Gifted.

Frank Adler (Chris Evans) has a little problem. Eking out a stable living repairing boat-motors in a seaside Florida town, the former professor is trying to prepare his niece Mary (the almost too-good McKenna Grace) for her first day at school. Not that she needs it. Mary is a math savant, being home-schooled by her genius uncle. But, there's only so much he can do. He's taking care of Mary because her Mom—his sister—committed suicide. An accomplished math-theoretician herself, she succumbed to the pressure of work and home and legacy, leaving Frank as care-taker.

He's been home-schooling Mary in their trailer-park, with the added social skills of neighbor Roberta (Octavia Spencer, who is good in a role that has "Octavia Spencer" written all over it**), but he's decided to to enroll her in school to socialize with kids her own age ("This is going to be fun! You'll meet kids today you'll be able to borrow money from the rest of your life!"). As her previous playmates have been adults and her play-time consisting of stacking algorithms like they were blocks, he thinks that one so endowed is only missing one thing—a childhood. 

Her first day does not go well. What takes the other kids 30 minutes to do, she does in two. While they are coping with Dr. Seuss, she's curious about the term "ad nauseum." And where their concerns are about who's "King of the Hill," she asks her Uncle if there's a God (after his initial hedging, she annoyed: "Just tell me..."). She's a kid and a math genius, all things have an answer. It's just a matter of working it out. She is(per my favorite line from "The Simpsons") "a Spalding Gray in a Rick Dees world." And lest she become like Holly Hunter's depressed news producer in Broadcast News ("It must be nice to be the smartest person in the room—to think you're always right and everyone else is wrong." "No, it's not. It's awful!"), Frank wants to put her on another path. When school administrators bring him to protest that she should be put in an institute of higher learning, his answer is simple: "...If we separate our leaders - if we segregate them from people like you and me - you get 'congressmen. So, just dumb her down to a decent human being. Everybody wins."

But, Frank is soon visited by his mother, Evelyn (Lindsay Duncan), Mary's grandmother, who has finally tracked him down after months of searching. She holds Frank in contempt, not only for abandoning his own professorial career-path, but, also for what she sees as his stunting Mary's potential. Mom has issues—she gave up her own sterling academic career to raise Mary's Mom and she was clearly using her daughter to compensate for her arrested goals. But she also has a lawyer, and she threatens a child custody battle to take Mary away from Frank, despite her daughter's wishes.

You'd think a math scholar would come up with a better solution than simple division by court order. But, she's driven. And desperate. And a real shrew. Fortunately, she's played by Duncan who suggests the neurosis and vulnerability in the character, in order to keep audiences from throwing popcorn at the screen. She's matched by Evans, who manages to make Frank less of a super-dad "Captain America-style" as a victim of conflictions and burn-out. But, the laurels go to the kid. Grace is going to eclipse everybody else in this movie in people's memory—which may not be fair as her work was no doubt influenced by everybody. 

"He's a dude and he's a guy/And he only has one eye/
Fred, Fred, Fred/Freddy, Fred, Fred"
Fred, the Amazing One-Eyed Cat

But, it's a miracle performance in that you believe the kid could be a math genius, while also being charming enough to be a handful. Director Webb never takes things easy, never appeals to the lowest common denominator, but always puts some sand in the sugar to make things seem a bit more real than is expected. And Gifted promises that he hasn't been derailed in that regard by his studies in super-hero myth.

 And that is a gift in itself.

* Yeah, yeah. It's been re-booted with Tom Holland.

** Probably not fair, but Spencer's so good she could do this role while in a coma.  It's not much of a challenge, and doesn't present the kind of opportunities  that Spencer is capable of. I would love to see her do something beyond "proudly restrained sass."