“Gifted” is the kind of movie that comes packaged with a
great gift inside that you toss aside because your expectations for it weren’t
met. I’m not sure whether or not that
makes it the gifts fault for not living up to the self-inflicted hype or mine
for having it in the first place, but I watched this movie, chewed it up, and
swallowed it in a way that suggested the meal was tasty but not digestible. Maybe at some point in this review I will
come up with a metaphor that works in a way that is supposed to, but if I do we
may find that it has come too late. For
Marc Webb’s “Gifted” is a movie with at least two promising ideas that never
pay off in a way that was never satisfying to me, and I felt there was a more
challenging screenplay buried somewhere in all of this. One of these days I’d like to see that movie,
but for now this one will likely suffice for many.
She tells Frank “didn’t I raise you to know not to piss off someone
stupid who has an increment of power?” I
quote this line with great fascination, because it was as if it was snuck into
the screenplay to tell the audience that they knew there was a more interesting
conflict in all of this beyond who got parental custody of Mary. There is a bigger question of who gets to
decide what is best for a child when there is something to be gained from them. If Mary wasn’t intelligent there is a real
possibility no court case would be needed.
The grandmother would not re-enter their lives because she has a second
chance to live out her own lifelong dreams through the grandchild (she tried
with her daughter but, obviously, that didn’t work out very well). There is the question of when a school
oversteps their boundaries. The events
get set into motion simply because Frank doesn’t want to send Mary to a special
school.
He wants her to grow up as a normal kid. These are good questions to address. While the movie does go to a court room, it
comes down making the grandmother looking ruthless without asking the tough
question of why they are all there in the first place? For that matter, why does Frank have to
develop a relationship with his niece’s attractive teacher when Octavia Spencer
is his neighbor, and she seems like she has a great personality? Wouldn’t it be more interesting for a
relationship to develop between two people who talk to each other and appear to
have things common? Never mind. “Gifted” is ultimately trying too hard to be
the gift that movie goers are expecting to get rather than what they would
really like. To go back to the present
analogy, sometimes we get gifts we ask for, but toss them aside a week later. Sometimes we get gifts that we don’t ask for,
but we find out we didn’t know we wanted them.
I think this movie reflects the first gift (just in movie form).
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| CONSUMER ADVICE |
Parents, there is the obligatory use of the f word and brief sex scene to make an otherwise perfectly fine family movie unsuitable for family viewing. Recommended for ages 12 and up.
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