Is there a precocious child store? Somewhere you go to acquire Matilda or Little Man Tate or that honey badger from Logan? “Tar-jay,” perhaps? These children don’t really exist, so there must be a place where you acquire them … a place where it’s squalid and unforgiving, so they have an intense appreciation of mediocrity as a step up. It’s also a place where they’re stuffed to the gills daily with facts, philosophy and cultural savvy but withheld from commonality so they’ll know just enough to back Henry Kissinger into a logical paradox and offer a mic-drop punchline in the process but then get lost in a game of tag: “What do you mean, I’m ‘it?’ That makes no sense. I’m going back to Descartes.”
Today’s starfish-out-of-water is six-year-old Mary (Mckenna Grace). Her world-renowned mathematical genius mother committed suicide five years ago, so she lives with her uncle, Captain America (Chris Evans). Actually, the amiable uncle Frank is far from a super anything in this film; he lives by a swamp and repairs boats, freelance, for a living. I wouldn’t quite call him “trailer trash,” but he’s working on it. Right now, he’s up to “trailer collection-of-too-many-papers-on-one’s-desk.” Frank thinks it’s about time Mary went to school. It is about time Mary went to school. And this is where the trouble begins. Because, you see, the school Mary belongs at is C.I.T., not the Country Day Playground and Diaper Changing Station.
This is, of course, where real life conflicts with movie life. When first grade teacher Bonnie (Jenny Slate) figures out that Mary is off-the-chart smart, she kicks the pebble that eventually turns into the avalanche of a custody battle. Common rule of thumb is once Octavia Spencer shows up, it’s only a matter of time before we get a courtroom scene. This one is actually inspired by Mary’s grandmother Evelyn (Lindsay Duncan), but I’m holding to my thesis – so long as Octavia isn’t God.
Ironically, in a film about the custody and future life of a super genius child, Gifted isn’t a terribly smart film: the court’s solution is absurd and the film’s resolution is even worse. However, there was one nugget of truth I liked enough to write down, when Evelyn chides her son for mishandling a school board: “Don’t cross small-minded people with a bit of authority.” That is the freaking anthem for the United States in the 21st Century.
As a parent, I constantly ask, “am I doing right by my child?” It is impossible to know. You guess based on the child’s accomplishments, but unless you’re a control freak, you don’t really know if that “success” reflects you or them or both or neither. And even with an accomplished child, you don’t know necessarily if you’ve been the tide that brought her safely to shore or the undertow she overcame to make it to the beach. Gifted thinks it knows exactly what Mary needs. HAH! Good luck with that. I could shoot two 
additional scenes and re-edit this film twenty different ways to come to a different conclusion.
And that is the greatest trouble with Gifted: the film identified the ending it wanted about 15 minutes in and then showed us scene after scene after scene that could not possibly yield said conclusion. And yet, we got there anyway, courts be damned. Custody battles aren’t fun on film. Custody battles aren’t fun not on film. They don’t lead to happy endings for anybody. The entire genre of fiction had to roll its eyes at the end of this film.
Math remains the yardstick by which we measure our cinematic Einsteins. Want us to believe your first grader is off-the-charts brilliant? Have her do some numerical parlor tricks. And now, I’m addressing you as a mathematician. Yes, I hold an actual degree in mathematics. And I ask, in all earnestness, why would you push a savant in that direction? Math is extremely useful for solving mathematical problems. Next to none of the great problems of our time are mathematical in nature. And some of the not-so-great problems of our time are cinematic.
♪Two and two are four
The cube root of one grand is ten
Cos squared plus sin squared equals one
The integral of natural log of x is x times natural log of x minus x
(Plus and constant)
Book worm, book worm,
Swallows knowledge manifold
You and your comprehension
Will bring folks to war♫
Rated PG-13, 101 Minutes
D: Marc Webb
W: Tom Flynn
Genre: Cramming that happy ending into a round hole
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Parents of Gifted children
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Realists
♪ Parody inspired by “The Inch Worm”
