Gifted

Dir: Marc Webb 1hr 41mins (12A) Ruthless weepie with Chris Evans

“Emotional manipulation gets a bad press,” said Charlotte O’sullivan in the London Evening Standard. “But hey, sometimes being milked for tears is fun.” Gifted is the ruthlessly touching tale of an orphaned seven-year-old maths prodigy, Mary (Mckenna Grace), whose gentle, hunky uncle (Chris Evans) is resolved that she should live an ordinary life. Trouble is, her grandmother, a British ice queen played by Lindsay Duncan, is determined the child should attend a school for gifted pupils, setting up the conflict at the heart of this contrived but effective drama. What makes this potentially saccharine movie palatable is Grace’s wonderful line in abrasively sarcastic humour, said Geoffrey Macnab in The Independent. But from pretty early on, it’s clear which way the story is headed. This is basically A Beautiful Mind with an admixture (once a court case ensues over custody of Mary) of Kramer vs. Kramer, said Tim Robey in The Daily Telegraph. And it has to be said that the central relationship between uncle and niece “is so cutesy formulaic, you spend the whole thing waiting to roll your eyes”.