HAVE you ever had that feeling that your young son or daughter is just a little bit … different?
Maybe they are constantly bored with the world around us because their brains are working at a higher level. Perhaps they are what educators call “special” or … Gifted.
Such is the title of the latest offering starring Chris Evans (“Fantastic Four”) who plays Frank Adler, a single man who has been drifting through life and suddenly finds himself raising his highly spirited young niece after the tragic death of his sister, Diane.
Without any planning—as if you could plan for something as life-changing as this—Adler is a man with limited income, no health insurance and is faced with raising a young girl who is truly a mathematical genius.
The official term is “prodigy” and Mary (Mckenna Grace) is a walking human computer who at the tender age of seven—is anything but normal as it is immediately obvious on his first day of first grade where she has already mastered advanced calculus and her teacher is clearly impressed.
Mary would come especially handy when it is time to do your taxes or when calculating how to send a man to Mars.
“Gifted” is played out in a small coastal town near Tampa, Florida (but actually filmed in Savannah, Georgia) where Adler is immediately setting plans to create a “normal” life of sunsets, walks on the beach and being a dad that his niece would otherwise never have.
Of course, there has to be an adversary and it shows up at his doorstep in the form of the most obnoxious do-gooder in the world … Adler’s pain in the behind estranged mother, Evelyn (Lindsay Duncan) who instead of allowing what you and I would living what society would consider a “normal” life, instead she thinks her granddaughter Mary is a “one in a billion” and wants to basically plug the little girl into a supercomputer to find out the origins of humanity.
Okay, that is a bit harsh.
But Dear Reader, you too will find the middle-aged Evelyn to be extremely annoying and planned so by director Marc Webb (“The Amazing Spider-Man”) who is working from a screenplay by Tom Flynn … so much so that she actually takes her own son to court to obtain legal parental rights to take little Mary to Massachusetts (a world away from Tampa) where she can start a life devoted to mathematics.
You too will find Evelyn especially caustic when she starts pontificating on how Mary should be raised.
All she needs is a pulpit to stand behind.
This is when I was hoping Evans would don his fighting togs as Captain America and drop kick Evelyn into the Gulf of Mexico.
Faced with limited options and sensing the court may rule against him, Adler, as Mary’s de-facto guardian, cuts a deal that will allow Evelyn to place Mary into foster care and enroll the young girl into a private school where Mary can decide where she wants to live after her 12th birthday.
As luck would have it, the foster parents live just 30 minutes away from Adler’s home.
Adler quickly discovers that his “mother” has taken up residence in the guest house of Mary’s foster home.
Forget about Captain America. This is when I wanted to see Chris Evans “Flame On” as he did when he was the Human Torch in two “Fantastic Four” movies and burn Evelyn to a cinder.
In “Gifted,” there is a backstory about Diane, Mary’s Mother, herself a mathematical wiz kid, solving an unsolvable mathematical equation called the “Navier-Stokes” problem, of which she deciphered prior to taking her own life, and led to her suicide.
Adler is in possession of this formula and will only give it to Evelyn if she drops all objections and give him full parental custody of Mary.
You can guess the answer to that question.
Bribery works every time.
Evans has been publicly talking about his desire to move away from Captain America and the Avengers and this role is the start of his professional breakaway.
But not so much. Chris Evans is and always will be Captain America and anyone who watches “Gifted” will be tainted with that perpetual image of the shield-slinging hero.
There’s a nice little role for Academy Award winning Octavia Spencer who plays Roberta Taylor, Frank and Mary’s land-lady and a close family friend who also helps out as an occasional nanny when Adler is out trying to secure a permanent job.
With health care benefits.
Like it or not folks, “Gifted” may be a cute little film (it was budgeted for a mere $7 million and took in $12 million at the domestic US box
office) but it is not going to erase the image of Chris Evans as Captain America nor earn him a Best Actor nomination at next year’s Oscars … but it does allow one to pause and look the 35-year-old actor in a deeper dramatic light.
And so, Dear Reader, the next time you look at your children’s math scores, you might want to be sure there are no other family members present when you open up the report card!
Questions, comments or travel suggestions, write me at readingruffolos@gmail.com.