LITTLE MAN TATE
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1991 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Good acting, good direction, but a really bad screenplay and story trying to make us all thank our lucky stars that we are not geniuses. This film insults the viewer's intelligence in specific and intelligence in general. This is the most paranoid view of the highly intelligence since SIMON. Rating: -1 (-4 to +4).
Poor Pinocchio! He was a wonderful magical puppet, but he knew it was much better to be a real live boy. Then there was Mr. Spock. He seemed to pride himself on his logical Vulcan side. But every chance the writers get they showed how much better it was to be human. Kirk's eulogy also said that of all souls Kirk had met, Spock's was the most human. Being a normal human must be the best thing in the whole universe. And look. We're all human. There are so many humans around, this just has to be Best of All Possible Worlds. And you and I are the best things to be. Just normal everyday people. Oh boy!
Fred Tate (played by Adam Hann-Byrd) is like one of the child geniuses in CHILDREN OF THE DAMNED. Daddy is nowhere to be found and Fred clearly does not get his genius from his mother's side. But at what looks like age two he is already reading labels on dinnerware, much to the amazement of his mother, Dede (played by Jodie Foster, who also directs). By age seven he is already brilliant in eight or nine different ways, including painting, poetry, mathematics, and music. When he is given a math problem he and the audience see the numbers float by in a pretty blue stream.
Fred is discovered by Jane Grierson (played by Dianne Wiest). Grierson heads a sort of institute that is funded in some way we never find out. Its opulence surely cannot all come from tuition. Her institute seems to collect dossiers on emerging child geniuses, screen them, and choose a select few to be given all the resources they need to develop to their full potential. It seems to work sort of like the similar organization in THE FURY. One of the children from this sort of environment seriously tells an interviewer, "I'm working on an experiment involving lasers, sulphuric acid, and butterflies." Oh, buy, that sure doesn't sound like much fun for the butterflies, does it, boys and girls? But then, we all knew that geniuses develop things like H-bombs because they have lost the human touch. Lucky you and I still have it, huh?
Well, as it turns out, Jane Grierson has her problems too. She is a genius, which means of course she eats funny things. She likes macrobiotic foods that make the normal side of Fred vomit. She listens to genius music by Mozart (but by the end credits we are back to people-oriented music like Cole Porter). And she does not know how to deal with people at all. Fred becomes the object of a tug-of-war between Dr. Grierson, who wants to develop his genius, and his mother, who wants him to be more average.
Oddly enough, just about everything I did not like was the script. Except for her choice of material, Jodie Foster did a good job with the film. Dianne Wiest turned in a very good performance, as usual. Like Kathleen Quinlan, another actress I admire, Wiest seems to have an aura of both vulnerability and courage. It is as if she has been badly hurt but has picked herself up and is carrying on.
Adam Hann-Byrd really plays a young genius very well. In spite of the script not knowing how geniuses behave, Hann-Byrd really does seem bright. Both Hann-Byrd and Wiest are more engaging than Foster. Foster seems satisfied to be the hero of the film and does not do much to steal scenes from the other two. Foster maintains our interest in the characters in spite of the weak script.
Overall I give this film a low -1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
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