Gifted (1 Viewer)

[Mark Booth]

It's predictable and manipulative, yet 'Gifted' is a wonderful film. I loved every minute of it.

The Booth Bijou gives 'Gifted' 4.5 out of 5 stars. It will definitely be coming to the Booth Bijou Garage Theater in 3-4 months.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/gifted_2017

Trailer:


Review:



Mark

 

[Robert Crawford]

I agree, a terrific film. I loved the chemistry between Chris Evans and the young actress. Another thing I liked about the film was the way

Spoiler

Evans found a way to further his niece's mathematical training while still giving her a chance to interact and grow up with other kids her age.

 

[Robert Crawford]

I can't believe more of us didn't see this fine film. I needed to get out of the house so I decided to see this again at my local theater. None of the new titles like The Circle didn't interest me. The film played better to me the second time than my first viewing of it. There a few scenes in this film that I really liked and one of them was when Frank and Mary were having a little philosophical discussion about faith. Those two really had good chemistry together. Another thing I liked is that Frank, though, not a genius, was a pretty bright guy in his own right based on his past and his current occupation.

 

[Mark Booth]

The theme of the film comes with personal experience. One day in 1964, my 3rd grade teacher and school principal called my parents in for a conference with the news that I had been deemed "gifted". Make no mistake, I was not at the math prodigy level of our little Mary Alder in the film. But that is the label that was applied to me. The school wanted to pull me out of my regular 3rd grade class and place me with other gifted students (of various grade levels up to 6th). My parents agreed. The program was just getting going at my school and we didn't even have our own classroom. Rather, our "gifted" class was set up in a central area of the building where we could see students in the regular classrooms and they could see us.

I absolutely hated it. First, I liked being the "smartest kid in class" and that was much more difficult in a group of other smart kids. Second, I had friends in my regular class. Third, the work was more challenging. Where I could breeze through my lessons in a regular 3rd grade class, I actually had to work at it in the gifted class. But the biggest difficulty was the stigma attached to being labeled "gifted". Although all of this happened through no choice of our own, it was common for the gifted students to be bullied during recess or after school.

Had I been transferred to a completely different facility where all of the students were gifted, I think it could have worked out much better. But as it was, I hated it and complained about it daily. Eventually, my parents began to realize I wasn't the same carefree happy kid I had been. They decided to have me moved back in my regular 3rd grade class. I proceeded to skate through school for the rest of my academic years. I learned to take the easy way, not the challenging path. And although my chosen path allowed me to retire happily to a very comfortable lifestyle at age 52, I frequently wonder how different my life might have been had I stuck with the challenging path.

No sour grapes. I've enjoyed a wonderful life (with some hiccups here and there, just like everyone else). But now that I'm 60, I've found that I reflect on "what could have been" more easily. The finish line, it's getting closer.

Mark

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I can't believe more of us didn't see this fine film.

I am interested in the film and will probably catch it on home video and/or streaming. It's perhaps not fair to filmmakers, but when a movie ticket costs me $16 for a single 2D feature with no bells or whistles, it's hard for me to justify paying that if the movie doesn't seem to demand to be seen on a big screen. To what Mark was saying about the film:

It's predictable and manipulative, yet 'Gifted' is a wonderful film.

That's exactly what the trailer looked like to me. And it looked like it would probably still be good, and certainly it has some cast members whose other work I enjoy. But it's just so darn expensive to see a movie in a theater that these kind of films are getting bumped to my "watch at home" list, where owning the Blu-ray will end up being cheaper than seeing it once in a theater. If I could have seen it in a theater for $10, I would have given it a chance. When a movie like this comes out, that has recognizable stars, an appealing story, and yet doesn't make a big dent in the box office, I wonder if there just wasn't an interested audience in the first place, or if there was a larger potential audience that made the same financial calculation I did to wait for video.

my 3rd grade teacher and school principal called my parents in for a conference with the news that I had been deemed "gifted".

The same thing happened with me, when I was in the fourth grade. At the time, my school district had three separate elementary schools that funneled into one middle school (which began at 6th grade) and one high school (which began at 9th grade). The gifted program took students from all three of the elementary schools, and was held at a different elementary school than the one I attended. We had just moved to this new school district for my fourth grade year, and I was having a difficult time making friends. My parents felt that having me change to a new school for my 5th grade year, and then have to change again in 6th grade, was just too much to put me through.

In hindsight, this was a mistake. The social situation never got any better for me at the school I was at. The kids made fun of mercilessly, for a combination of things - most often because my parents were divorced (even though it was the early 90s, apparently there were very few divorced parents in the district) and because I was smart. I wasn't a genius then and I don't think I am one now, but I have decent reading comprehension skills and enjoyed learning (especially the humanities), and that was enough to set me apart. When I eventually got to sixth grade and met all of the kids who had been in the gifted program that my parents declined my entry to, these kids didn't welcome me into their group either. They were skeptical that I was actually as good as them; that I wasn't in their program was proof to them that I didn't belong with them. Who knows if they would have been more accepting had I done the program with them, or if they had already formed an impenetrable clique by then anyway. My teachers at the regular school were generally kind and understanding, and made efforts to make me feel welcome, but the social situation with my peers was horrendous and the teachers seemed powerless to step in.

Whenever I see a story about a gifted program, I think back to that period of my life. I don't blame my parents for making the choice they did, and I don't think missing out on one year of a gifted program had a negative effect on any of my college or career options. I didn't quite coast through school, but when so much of your daily energy is spent fighting off physical and verbal attacks from your peers, it was harder to stay motivated to be involved in extracurricular activities and have school spirit.

It's sorta funny that our experiences were so different, Mark - that you were dealing with bullying because you were smart and in a gifted program, and I got it because I was just the "smartest kid in the class" in the regular class. I wonder if I would have been more protected in the gifted program, or if the kids in that program suffering bullying in their school as well. I'm hesitant to recommend harsh overcorrections for this - we probably shouldn't start sending little kids to jail automatically for being mean to other little kids - but I wonder why so much of this needless cruelty is just accepted as "boys will be boys".

At any rate, I look forward to the film even more following your glowing recommendation!

 

[Mark Booth]

The theater we saw 'Gifted' at is an AMC. A Tuesday matinee is something like $5.99 for AMC Stubs members.

Mark

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I caught a matinee of this at the local arthouse theater. My mother never goes to the movies, but I got her out to see this. We both loved it.

I'm so happy that the Captain America movies broke Chris Evans out of being typecast as either the dumb jock or the wisecracking jock. He's great in these more earnest roles. These sorts of movies like to have a salt-of-the-earth simple man with practical smarts but not book smarts. Evans's role, well-written and well-acted, is more complex than that. He comes from a high IQ family that emphasized formal education. Even though he's living that salt-of-the-earth simple life as a boat mechanic, he utilizes an extensive vocabulary and speaks authoritatively on a diverse range of subjects.

He might not be a genius-level prodigy like his sister or his niece, but he is still very, very intelligent. Even when their at odds, the conversations between him and his mother are a joy to watch because they're not dumbing anything down for each other.

The whole movie would have fallen apart if they hadn't gotten an extraordinarily talented young actress to play Mary. Fortunately, they did. Before this, I think I'd only every seen Mckenna Grace as the president's daughter on ABC's "Designated Survivor". She's perfectly fine in that, but it never would have led me to expect a performance like this. As Crawdaddy said, the parent/child chemistry with Evans is terrific. But she also holds her own with two of the great actresses working today in Octavia Spencer and Lindsay Duncan. And it's difficult for even adult actors to play a character who is smarter than they are. She pulls it off effortlessly. In the genius moments, you can tell that she completely understands emotionally and intellectually the dialog she's delivering. And the moments where Mary gets to just be a kid are equally believable.

Jenny Slate has some good moments as Mary's teacher, a role completely different from everything else I've seen her in.

Yes, this is a well-worn formula. But at the end of the year, Gifted will probably be one of my favorite films of 2017.

 

[Johnny Angell]

The trailer appears to make the grandmother the villain. After reading Josh and Mark's comments, I wonder if that was fair.

I also wonder if the human race wouldn't be improved if newborns were inoculated with an empathy boost so that they wouldn't be such assholes later in childhood.

 

[Mike Frezon]

Peg and I watched this tonight.

We, too, had a vested interest in the subject matter. In our case, it was our two children who were both way ahead of their peers. So, while dramatized (and, of course, not to this extreme), the situation in how best to deal with a gifted child and a normal upbringing rings true to us.

VERY enjoyable film.

Another thing I liked is that Frank, though, not a genius, was a pretty bright guy in his own right based on his past and his current occupation.

I must've said this to Peg at least three times during the film--including during the discussion about faith. They made Frank out to be quite a smart guy in his own right...which was nice and a break from what one might expect when a tale like this is getting told.

The scene at the end when Frank drops the bomb on Evelyn about the proof (when it would be published) caught us both by surprise. It's always awesome when such a reveal peels away so many layers of plot/motivations in one fell swoop.

For those who haven't done so. Watch the deleted scenes. A couple are quite powerful. One shows even more of a flat-out amazing performance by McKenna Grace as her court-appointed psychiatric counselor plants a truly awful thought into her head. And features another classic face-off between Frank & Evelyn...which would have really nicely set up that big bomb I mentioned above.

Chris Evans and Grace McKenna were absolutely terrific in the film. Octavia Spencer's character really wasn't crucial to the story (IMO) and as an actress she didn't really have much to do. And I kept wishing they had cast Emma Thompson as the grandmother.

And I kinda fell in love with Fred.

 

[Robert Crawford]

The deleted scenes were really good especially that extended exchanged between Frank and Evelyn.

Also, did you watch that one bonus material segment in which Grace and Evans were together? Grace was talking with such sophistication that you would think she was 30 years old instead of just being 9 or whatever her age was making that film.

As to Fred, I don't like cats, but he was great in this film.

 

[Mike Frezon]

The deleted scenes were really good especially that extended exchanged between Frank and Evelyn.

Also, did you watch that one bonus material segment in which Grace and Evans were together? Grace was talking with such sophistication that you would think she was 30 years old instead of just being 9 or whatever her age was making that film.

As to Fred, I don't like cats, but he was great in this film.

I don't like cats ether...but Fred was cool!

Grace was like Tatum O'Neal must've been at that age. Waaaaaay ahead of her age.

 

[Robert Crawford]

I have to think that Fred was a rescued cat in real life.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

The trailer appears to make the grandmother the villain. After reading Josh and Mark's comments, I wonder if that was fair.

I think the grandmother remained "the villain" through the whole movie. Some thoughts from my review:

"Gifted features an important debate at its core. I work in education so I see the conflict between a push to optimize potential versus the desire to let kids lead normal lives.

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to this dilemma, but Gifted still drops the ball, partly because it paints the grandmother in such an ugly light. Yeah, the film allows Evelyn to loosen up a little as it goes, but it’s clear from Minute One that we’re supposed to side with charming, handsome Frank, not his Cruella DeVil-ish mom.

The inherently one-sided nature of the movie becomes a massive issue, and Gifted doesn’t compensate in other ways. The film explores topics in a relentlessly one-dimensional manner and doesn’t posit a cliché that it doesn’t love. Nary a moment of originality emerges here."

 

[SamT]

I'm going to watch this next week with a family member. Hopefully it's good.