MOVIE REVIEW : A Promise Unfulfilled

As an actress, Jodie Foster has a remarkable gift for dramatizing the play of intelligence in her characters. There’s a quick-witted, no-nonsense quality about her; she would have thrived in the ‘30s and ‘40s, when Hollywood wasn’t terrified of women with smarts and mettle.

Foster’s unwillingness to play demure damsels may have contributed to a shortage of good roles for her over the years. Now, she’s turned to directing, and given the intelligence of her acting, the subject of her new film sounded promising. Most of the promise remains unfulfilled.

“Little Man Tate” (selected theaters) is about a 7-year-old prodigy, Fred Tate (Adam Hann-Byrd), who lives in an inner-city tenement with his cocktail-waitress mother Dede (Foster). Fred is an equal-opportunity whiz. Not only is he an accomplished painter, pianist, poet, mathematician and physicist, but, considering his age, he also possesses uncanny human insight.

Though he adores his doting mother, he’s stifled by the poverty, both physical and intellectual, of his environment. When child psychologist Jane Grierson (Dianne Wiest), once a prodigy herself, gets wind of Fred’s talents, she maneuvers the resistant Dede into allowing her to take charge of Fred for a while.

Along with four other young prodigies, Fred sets out with Jane on a science fair field trip called “The Odyssey of the Mind.” Later, Jane moves Fred into her spacious home and enrolls him in college for a semester.

Foster, working from a script by Scott Frank, has a clean, calibrated approach to directing; there’s a principled calculation behind her camera setups and pacing.

The life of a child prodigy is a great subject for a movie--imagine what Truffaut might have done with it! And at first it’s promising that Foster isn’t putting everything into soft focus. But the script doesn’t explore how intelligence can enrich one’s life. Fred’s loneliness and awkwardness are portrayed as a direct consequence of his brainpower.

“Little Man Tate” (rated PG) is about how Fred comes to terms with the “normal” side of himself, and we’re meant to nod approvingly at his normalization. It’s condescension posing as wisdom. The film seems to have been made to comfort all the slow learners in the audience who don’t possess Fred’s gifts--just about all of us.

It doesn’t even do an honest job describing Fred’s gifts. We never get a good look at his paintings, and his math skills are displayed in a competition where he reels off cube roots of mega-digit numbers. This type of computer-brain stunt work is a dunderhead’s idea of what genius is all about. (It mistakes calculation for creativity.)

What we never see is Fred’s exhilaration in experiencing the way his own mind works; we never see him discover the beauty of a mathematical formula or a symphony or a painting.

In a way, Fred is like a pipsqueak version of a current movie hero: the overachiever in films like “Regarding Henry” and “The Doctor” who becomes whole again by locating the child within himself. Until Fred learns this lesson, too, he’s prematurely dour; he even has an ulcer.

There are other lessons to be learned. Dede recognizes that intellectual nourishment is as important as emotional nourishment; Jane learns the same lesson in reverse. It’s all very tidy and instructive.

Fred’s working-class background comes in for some heavy-duty finger-pointing. Dede is portrayed with a blue-collar accent a mile wide, just in case we failed to recognize that she lacked booklearnin’.

The implication is that she doesn’t understand Fred’s need for intellectual challenge; a single mother, she doesn’t want to lose him to the world. And Jane is portrayed in mirror-image fashion: Unmarried, neglected as a child by her physician parents, her upper-class background has shielded her from the juices of the common folk. She has no way to relate to Fred on an emotional level. By the end of the film, the prodigy has awakened both women to a fuller appreciation of what life has to offer.

And a little child shall lead them. . . .

It’s possible to reject what this film is saying and still enjoy a few of the performances. Foster is too warped by the working-class strictures of her role, but she still has her fierce gumption. It’s believable that Fred would be her child, and Adam Hann-Byrd matches up well with her physically.

Dianne Wiest is immensely sympathetic in what might have been a frosty-princess role. In her scenes with the prodigies, we can see how she still clings to their world as a connection to her own childhood; it’s a clue to why she can’t fit into the world of adult empathy. As the young math whiz known as the “Mathemagician,” P. J. Ochlan is very funny; donning a cape, he preens his skills as fatuously as any matinee idol.

Harry Connick Jr., playing a college roustabout who befriends Fred and takes him to a pool hall, has a lazy grace that keeps the film spinning whenever he’s on screen. The pool hall scene, however, is a major missed opportunity. Wouldn’t Fred be dazzled by the vectors of the game?

Hann-Byrd has the requisite young-old look, and it’s believable that he’s as bright as the film makes him out to be. But his performance is also a key to what’s wrong with the movie. Because the filmmakers rarely allow Fred to even crack a smile, we’re left with the image of his wary, all-seeing mask of gloom. His intelligence doesn’t light him from within, and he lacks the self-starting industriousness that prodigies often have. He’s a blank, really, and despite some wonderful grace notes, so is the movie.

‘Little Man Tate’

Jodie Foster: Dede Tate

Adam Hann-Byrd: Fred Tate

Dianne Wiest: Jane Grierson

Harry Connick: Jr. Eddie

An Orion Pictures corporation presentation. Director Jodie Foster. Producer Scott Rudin and Peggy Rajski. Executive producer Randy Stone. Screenplay by Scott Frank. Cinematographer Mike Southon. Editor Lynzee Klingman. Costumes Susan Lyall. Music Mark Isham. Production design Jon Hutman. Art director Adam Lustig. Set decorator Sam Schaffer. Running time: 1 hour, 39 minutes.

MPAA-rated PG.