GIFTED

Cert Running time

A high tolerance for sugary sentiment is essential to enjoy this syrupy custody battle. The precocious, cute and extremely funny Mckenna Grace comprehensively upstages her adult co-stars as seven-year-old Mary. On her first day at a new school, she is identified as being intellectually gifted at mathematics. But her guardian, Uncle Frank, with whom she has a winningly convincing chemistry, just wants her to have an ordinary life. Mary’s teacher, unsurprisingly, has the hots for Frank, who’s played by Chris Evans and best known for being Marvel’s Captain America. He’s so ridiculously good looking he probably gets turned down for Diet Coke adverts. Waiting in court is Lindsay Duncan as Mary’s magnificently mean grandmother. She wants to send Mary to a special school so the child can achieve her full potential. The script pounds your heartstrings and a famous maths theorem lurks uncompleted, but ultimately the increasingly preposterous plot simply doesn’t add up.

story from a new perspective. With her close family coming from a gospel music background, it’s suggested the church’s stance is complicit in her fall from grace. A crowded marriage to Bobby Brown was made worse by the pressure of fame. And it is...