Gifted | |
---|---|
Directed by | Marc Webb |
Written by | Tom Flynn |
Produced by |
|
Starring | |
Cinematography | Stuart Dryburgh |
Edited by | Bill Pankow |
Music by | Rob Simonsen |
Production companies |
|
Distributed by | Fox Searchlight Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 101 minutes [1] |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $7 million [2] |
Box office | $43 million [2] |
Gifted is a 2017 American drama film directed by Marc Webb and written by Tom Flynn. It stars Chris Evans, Mckenna Grace, Lindsay Duncan, Jenny Slate and Octavia Spencer.
The plot follows an intellectually gifted seven-year-old who becomes the subject of a custody battle between her maternal uncle and maternal grandmother.
The film was released on April 7, 2017, by Fox Searchlight Pictures, and grossed $43 million worldwide. At the 23rd Critics' Choice Awards, Grace was nominated for Best Young Actor/Actress. The film received mixed-to-positive reviews from critics, who praised the performances of Evans and Grace, but noted its predictability.
In St. Petersburg, Florida, seven-year-old Mary Adler, a mathematical genius, lives with her uncle and de facto guardian, Frank. Her best friend is her 43-year-old neighbor, Roberta Taylor. Frank, a former philosophy professor now boat mechanic, feels strongly that Mary should attend a normal elementary school so she can have a normal childhood.
On her first day of first grade, Mary shows remarkable mathematical talent, which impresses her teacher, Bonnie Stevenson. She approaches Frank about it but he tries to pass it off as the Trachtenberg system until she tricks Mary into completing a college math test, and confronts him again.
It emerges that Mary's mother, Diane, had been a genius mathematician, dedicated to the Navier–Stokes problem (one of the unsolved Millennium Prize Problems) before committing suicide when Mary was six months old. Mary has lived with Frank ever since.
Despite Mary’s initial disdain for average children her own age and her boredom with their classwork, she begins to bond with them when she brings her one-eyed cat Fred for show-and-tell. Later, she defends a classmate from a bully on the school bus, something that Frank is not concerned about.
After the incident, the principal, having discovered Mary’s math talent, encourages Frank to send Mary to a private school for gifted children, offering the opportunity of a scholarship. However, he turns it down, based on his family's experiences with similar schools.
The principal contacts Frank's estranged mother and Mary's maternal grandmother Evelyn. As a former mathematician herself, she is of the opinion that people with capabilities such as Mary’s have an obligation to use their talents to further help society.
Evelyn therefore feels that Mary should be specially tutored in preparation for a life devoted to mathematics, much as Diane was. However, Frank is adamant that his sister would want Mary to be in a normal school and have the childhood she did not have. So, Evelyn later sues him for full custody.
While Evelyn is on the stand in court, it is revealed that she kept Diane socially isolated, forcing her to be completely focused on mathematics. When Diane and her teenage boyfriend secretly went off to a ski resort, Evelyn threatened to charge him with kidnapping, forcing him to break up with Diane. Her daughter attempted suicide for the first time shortly after, which she argues was an isolated incident.
When Frank takes the stand, he admits working at a low-paying job without health insurance. His lawyer, worried that the judge will side with Evelyn who has a better financial situation, encourages Frank to take a deal offered by Evelyn’s lawyer. Mary would be placed in foster care and attend the private school dictated by Evelyn. The foster parents live 25 minutes from Frank's home, he will be entitled to scheduled visits, and Mary will be able to decide where she wants to live after her 12th birthday.
Devastated at being placed in foster care, Mary seemingly refuses to see Frank when he visits. Later, he learns that Fred was put up for adoption. Realizing that Evelyn, who is allergic to cats, must be overseeing Mary's education in the foster home, Frank goes there and reconciles with Mary.
Frank reveals to Evelyn that Diane had completed the Navier–Stokes Problem, which their mother was obsessed with and pushed her to solve. However, she instructed Frank to publish the equation only after Evelyn’s death, which reveals her deep resentment towards her mother.
Frank offers Evelyn the opportunity to publish Diane's work in exchange for Mary's custody, to which she agrees. He takes Mary home, where she socializes with children her age while taking college-level courses.
In December 2014, Tom Flynn's screenplay was one of the 70 to make that year's Black List. [3] In August 2015, it was announced Chris Evans had been cast in the film, with Marc Webb directing. [4] In September 2015, Mckenna Grace, Octavia Spencer, Lindsay Duncan and Jenny Slate joined the cast, [5] [6] and in November 2015, Julie Ann Emery was also added. [7]
Filming began in October 2015 in Savannah, Georgia, as well as in Tybee Island, Georgia, [8] and finished in November 2015. Specific locations included May Howard Elementary School in Wilmington Island, Georgia and Emory University in Atlanta. [9]
Although the film is set in St. Petersburg, Florida, screenwriter Tom Flynn was unable to convince the producers to film in Florida, because the state was no longer providing financial incentives to movie makers; that made Georgia a more financially viable option. [10]
Mathematician Jordan Ellenberg, who was himself a child prodigy, was a mathematics consultant for the film; [11] Webb contacted him after reading his article [12] in The Wall Street Journal and asked him to share his experiences. [13] Ellenberg also cameos as a professor lecturing on the partition function and Ramanujan's congruences. [13]
The film was scheduled to be released on April 12, 2017, but was pushed up to April 7, 2017. [14]
Gifted grossed $24.8 million in the United States and Canada, and $18.2 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $43 million against a production budget of $7 million. [2]
The film went wide on Wednesday, April 12, 2017, and in its opening weekend grossed $3.1 million, finishing 6th at the box office. In its second weekend of wide expansion, it added more screens, and made $4.6 million, an increase of 47.5% from the previous week. [15]
On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, Gifted has an approval rating of 73% based on 173 reviews, with an average rating of 6.4/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Gifted isn't quite as bright as its pint-sized protagonist, but a charming cast wrings respectably engaging drama out of a fairly predictable premise." [16] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 60 out of 100, based on 33 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". [17] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale. [18]
Colin Covert of the Star Tribune gave the film 3/4 stars, saying, "Sure, it's a simple, straightforward film, but sometimes that's all you need as long as its heart is true." [19] On Evans' performance, Owen Gleiberman of Variety said, "Chris Evans, abashed and rumpled, with a grease monkey’s can’t-be-bothered-to-shave beard, gives an engaged performance, exuding a homespun warmth we haven’t seen in the “Captain America” films." [20] Richard Roeper gave the film 4 out of 4 stars and said, "Gifted isn't the best or most sophisticated or most original film of the year so far – but it just might be my favorite." [21]
Award | Date of ceremony | Category | Recipient(s) | Result | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Teen Choice Awards | August 13, 2017 | Choice Movie: Drama | Gifted | Nominated | [22] |
Choice Movie Actor: Drama | Chris Evans | Nominated | |||
Deauville American Film Festival | September 1, 2017 | Public's choice award | Gifted | Won | [23] |
Phoenix Film Critics Society Awards | December 17, 2017 | Breakthrough Performance | Mckenna Grace | Won | [24] |
Best Performance by a Youth | Won | ||||
The Overlooked Film of the Year | Gifted | Won | |||
Women Film Critics Circle Awards | December 17, 2017 | Best Young Actress | Mckenna Grace | Nominated | [25] |
Critics' Choice Movie Awards | January 11, 2018 | Best Young Actor/Actress | Nominated | [26] | |
NAACP Image Awards | January 15, 2018 | Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture | Octavia Spencer | Won | [27] |
A mental calculator or human calculator is a person with a prodigious ability in some area of mental calculation.
Say Anything... is a 1989 American teen romantic comedy drama film written and directed by Cameron Crowe. The film follows the romance between Lloyd Dobler, an average student, and Diane Court, the class valedictorian, immediately after their graduation from high school.
Christopher Robert Evans is an American actor. He began his career with roles in television series such as Opposite Sex in 2000. Following appearances in several teen films, including 2001's Not Another Teen Movie, he gained attention for his portrayal of Marvel Comics character the Human Torch in Fantastic Four (2005) and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007). Evans later reprised the role in Deadpool and Wolverine (2024). Evans made further appearances in film adaptations of comic books and graphic novels: TMNT (2007), Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010), and Snowpiercer (2013).
Marc Preston Webb is an American filmmaker and music video director. Webb made his feature film directorial debut in 2009 with the romantic comedy 500 Days of Summer and went on to direct The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014), which were later dubbed the "Webb-Verse" by Marvel Studios in 2021. He also directed the drama films Gifted and The Only Living Boy in New York and the upcoming Disney remake of Snow White (2025).
Mary Elizabeth Winstead is an American actress. Her first major role was that of Jessica Bennett on the NBC soap opera Passions (1999–2000). She came to wider attention for her roles in the horror series Wolf Lake (2001–2002), the horror films Final Destination 3 (2006) and Death Proof (2007), and the slasher film Black Christmas (2006); by the end of the 2000s she had gained a reputation as a scream queen.
Evelyn Boyd Granville was the second African-American woman to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics from an American university; she earned it in 1949 from Yale University. She graduated from Smith College in 1945. She performed pioneering work in the field of computing.
Fried Green Tomatoes is a 1991 American comedy-drama film directed by Jon Avnet and based on Fannie Flagg's 1987 novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. Written by Flagg and Carol Sobieski, and starring Kathy Bates, Jessica Tandy, Mary Stuart Masterson, Mary-Louise Parker and Cicely Tyson, the film tells the story of a middle-aged housewife who, unhappy with her life, befriends an elderly lady in a nursing home and is enthralled by the tales she tells of people she used to know.
The Bad Seed is a 1956 American psychological thriller film directed by Mervyn LeRoy and starring Nancy Kelly, Patty McCormack, Henry Jones and Eileen Heckart.
Octavia Lenora Spencer is an American actress. She is the recipient of several accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, and a Golden Globe Award, in addition to a nomination for a Primetime Emmy Award.
What Makes a Family is a 2001 American drama television film directed by Maggie Greenwald, written by Robert L. Freedman, and starring Brooke Shields, Cherry Jones, Anne Meara, Al Waxman, and Whoopi Goldberg. The film premiered on Lifetime on January 22, 2001.
Jordan Stuart Ellenberg is an American mathematician who is a professor of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research involves arithmetic geometry. He is also an author of both fiction and non-fiction writing.
Mckenna Grace is an American actress and singer. Born in Grapevine, Texas, she began acting professionally at age five and relocated to Los Angeles, California, as a child. Her earliest roles included Jasmine Bernstein in the Disney XD sitcom Crash & Bernstein (2012–2014) and Faith Newman in the soap opera The Young and the Restless (2013–2015). After several small roles, she starred as a child prodigy in Gifted (2017), a breakthrough for which she received a nomination for the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Young Performer.
Hidden Figures is a 2016 American biographical drama film directed by Theodore Melfi and written by Melfi and Allison Schroeder. It is loosely based on the 2016 non-fiction book of the same name by Margot Lee Shetterly about three female African-American mathematicians: Katherine Goble Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, who worked at NASA during the Space Race. Other stars include Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst, Jim Parsons, Mahershala Ali, Aldis Hodge, and Glen Powell.
Caila Marsai Martin is an American actress and producer, best known for her role as Diane Johnson on the ABC sitcom Black-ish (2014–2022).
Annabelle Comes Home is a 2019 American supernatural horror film written and directed by Gary Dauberman, in his directorial debut, from a story by Dauberman and James Wan, who also served as producer with Peter Safran. It serves as a sequel to 2014's Annabelle and 2017's Annabelle: Creation, and as the sixth installment in The Conjuring Universe franchise. The film stars Mckenna Grace, Madison Iseman, and Katie Sarife, along with Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson, who reprise their roles as Ed and Lorraine Warren.
Just Beyond is an American horror comedy anthology television series created by Seth Grahame-Smith for Disney+, based on the Boom! Studios graphic novel series of the same name by R. L. Stine. The series premiered on October 13, 2021, with all 8 episodes. The series was removed from Disney+ on May 26, 2023.
A Friend of the Family is an American biographical crime drama television miniseries. Based on true events, it focuses on Robert Berchtold, who in the 1970s sexually abused and twice kidnapped Jan Broberg. The show stars Jake Lacy as Berchtold, and Hendrix Yancey and Mckenna Grace as Broberg at different ages. Colin Hanks, Lio Tipton, and Anna Paquin complete the cast.
Since Florida lawmakers put a stop to offering film incentives, productions, like "Gifted", have been forced to head north in search of a better deal.