As Frank, Evans is sweetly homespun, aeons away from his role as Marvel’s Captain America. The question at the movie’s heart is: what’s best for Mary’s future? Should she swap her happy, laidback existence on the seafront for a strict, regimented education? Just because she’s gifted, must she be pushed to her intellectual limits at all costs? The answer is predictable and the workings are formulaic, but that doesn’t stop ‘Gifted’ messing with your tear ducts. What follows is a messy detour into family law and a custody battle. Mary’s outstanding mathematical abilities soon attract the attention of the local school staff – as well as Frank’s formidable mother. That means swapping her home-schooling in their pastel house edged with palm trees for a real classroom and other kids her age. Mary’s mother committed suicide when she was a baby, leaving her in Frank’s care.Ī few years later, he’s a single dad trying to bring up Mary as he thinks her mother would have wanted. There are profound moments, especially in places where Evans and Duncan do battle out of court as mother and son, but there aren't enough of them to make Gifted, well, gifted.‘Gifted’ boasts an A+ cast, but child actor Mckenna Grace outshines the bigger names in this sweet and sentimental family saga as Mary, a precocious, alarmingly intelligent seven-year-old living with her uncle Frank (Chris Evans) in a scruffy, sun-kissed corner of Florida. The dialogue gives "surprises" away, and Slate and Spencer are wasted in underwritten roles. The takeaways about gifted children are well-trodden, the plot twists hardly twisty. For a film with a custody case at the heart of its plot, Gifted is surprisingly inert. It's a pity the messy script doesn't live up Grace's her gifts. To watch her and Evans (and, in some scenes, Spencer) is to witness a future award-winning actress in the making. Her Mary is far from a caricature, a young girl who's still pining for the love and presence of her parents and the simple pleasures of hanging out with her cat but is easily bored with any math that doesn't require a Ph.D. Grace is masterful, displaying the kind of nuance and depth of emotion that older, more seasoned actors do. This drama isn't what you'd call groundbreaking or memorable, but, thanks to its two leads - Evans and young Grace - it's more appealing than it really deserves to be. Evelyn thinks Mary belongs with her and shouldn't be raised by her wayward son Frank wants to raise Mary like any other kid (albeit one whose best friend is their landlady next door ( Octavia Spencer). Evelyn is a mathematician herself, and she helped nurture Frank's sister's monumental academic gifts sadly, Mary's mom died when she was in her early 20s, shortly after giving birth to Mary. This prompts further interventions, which occasion the arrival of Frank's mother, Evelyn (Lindsay Duncan). ![]() Frank is told about a chance for Mary to attend a school for gifted kids, which he turns down. Within a day, it's clear the elementary school in their Florida town is far from adequate, after Mary's teacher ( Jenny Slate) intuits that her new student is far more advanced than her peers. But then he decides she needs to start making friends her own age and attending a regular school. A former philosophy professor, Frank now makes a pseudo-living fixing boats while he raises Mary, a second-grader who's fascinated with differential equations and anything to do with advanced mathematics. GIFTED Mary Adler (Mckenna Grace) has always been homeschooled by her devoted but beleaguered uncle, Frank Adler ( Chris Evans).
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