Gifted (12A.)
Directed by Marc Webb.
Starring Chris Evans, McKenna Grace, Lindsay Duncan, Jenny Slate and Octavia Spencer. 101 mins.
There's something about the inscrutable incomprehensibility of theoretical mathematics – those strings of punctuation heavy gibberish that are scrawled across blackboards in Stephen Hawking biopics – that affronts the rest of humanity. It's so incomprehensible, so elitist, that it brings out the worst in us. In Hollywood films the response to it seems to be an urge, possibly unconscious, to confront it with heightened, almost virulent stupidity, to cut these smarty pants down to size, while still appearing to express admiration for them.
Gifted is formed from a truly hideous equation: Good Will Hunting + cute child + courtroom drama = a winner. Evans has what passes for the Affleck role, a former philosophy professor who now repairs boats for a living. He could be a member of the intelligentsia, but prefers the integrity of being an ordinary blue collar beer swigging guy and getting his hand's dirty. Matt Damon is his 7-year-old niece (Grace) who is a maths prodigy that he is raising after his sister's suicide. He doesn't want her to go to a school for gifted children because he wants her to have a “normal” life. But enter evil glamourous English granny (Duncan, dressed up like Kathleen Turner) to fight him for custody.
The problem with the film is that it is based on a fallacy – that the kid is a super intelligent but sensitive child who deserves better than a life locked away in academia. In fact, the kid is an objectionable smart arse, and I'd have packed off to the nerd farm as soon as possible.
These kind of melodramas are supposed to be manipulative, but all the calculations are askew here. The court case exists in a strange adjunct, almost unrelated to the rest of the film. Almost every action in the film seems stubbornly illogical and not properly thought through, with character actions following formulas that bear little relation to their situation. Towards the end Evans makes a decision, a compromise, that is so pointless, so utterly ridiculous that it seemed to negate everything that has happened prior to that point, and so enraged me that I had to restrain myself from standing up and shouting out my objection at the screen. Let that be a warning to you, the idiocy in this film is infectious.
Directed by Marc Webb.
Starring Chris Evans, McKenna Grace, Lindsay Duncan, Jenny Slate and Octavia Spencer. 101 mins.
There's something about the inscrutable incomprehensibility of theoretical mathematics – those strings of punctuation heavy gibberish that are scrawled across blackboards in Stephen Hawking biopics – that affronts the rest of humanity. It's so incomprehensible, so elitist, that it brings out the worst in us. In Hollywood films the response to it seems to be an urge, possibly unconscious, to confront it with heightened, almost virulent stupidity, to cut these smarty pants down to size, while still appearing to express admiration for them.
Gifted is formed from a truly hideous equation: Good Will Hunting + cute child + courtroom drama = a winner. Evans has what passes for the Affleck role, a former philosophy professor who now repairs boats for a living. He could be a member of the intelligentsia, but prefers the integrity of being an ordinary blue collar beer swigging guy and getting his hand's dirty. Matt Damon is his 7-year-old niece (Grace) who is a maths prodigy that he is raising after his sister's suicide. He doesn't want her to go to a school for gifted children because he wants her to have a “normal” life. But enter evil glamourous English granny (Duncan, dressed up like Kathleen Turner) to fight him for custody.
The problem with the film is that it is based on a fallacy – that the kid is a super intelligent but sensitive child who deserves better than a life locked away in academia. In fact, the kid is an objectionable smart arse, and I'd have packed off to the nerd farm as soon as possible.
These kind of melodramas are supposed to be manipulative, but all the calculations are askew here. The court case exists in a strange adjunct, almost unrelated to the rest of the film. Almost every action in the film seems stubbornly illogical and not properly thought through, with character actions following formulas that bear little relation to their situation. Towards the end Evans makes a decision, a compromise, that is so pointless, so utterly ridiculous that it seemed to negate everything that has happened prior to that point, and so enraged me that I had to restrain myself from standing up and shouting out my objection at the screen. Let that be a warning to you, the idiocy in this film is infectious.
