What Captain America does when he’s off duty
Gifted 12A cert, 101 min
Dir Marc Webb Starring Chris Evans, Mckenna Grace, Lindsay Duncan, Jenny Slate, Octavia Spencer
No one could begrudge Chris Evans a break from Captain America duties. You can’t safeguard the Stars and Stripes, fling that shield around, and perform all those exhausting rounds of spin-off Avenging without needing an occasional pause to take stock.
As a project to pick between green-screen sessions, Gifted looks sweet and low-key, a human-scaled drama that Evans could probably take his mum along to – it’s a chance to recharge those acting batteries just a little, too. Absolutely nothing about it is embarrassing or bad. But little in it screams necessity, or suggests all the wonderful options a superhero gets to choose between on his downtime.
It’s essentially A Beautiful Young Mind with a child-custody melodrama superimposed. The key relationship, between Evans’s scruffy Florida handyman and his mathematically advanced seven-year-old niece, Mary (Mckenna Grace), is cutesy-formulaic – Evans’s dependable charisma and Grace’s defiant odd-duck quality just about keep the basic story afloat, but only just. Tom Flynn’s script is original, in the sense that it hasn’t been specifically adapted from a true story, but not in any other sense.
Evans’s role as Frank, guardian to this girl after the suicide of his equally brilliant sister, hasn’t been given enough contours, and Grace’s funniest moments as Mary feel like obvious writerly zings. Even though her precociousness gives Flynn theoretical carte blanche to make her sound as wise-beyond-her-years as he likes, a subtler film would have dished this out a bit less relentlessly, playing up her childishness more than her rapier wit.
Directing is Marc Webb, of the Amazing Spider-man films and (500) Days of Summer fame – the latter, of course, responsible for inducting another prodigy-moppet on to our screens in the shape of Chloë Grace Moretz. He has an easy way with the performers, and gets good scenes from Jenny Slate (Obvious Child) as Mary’s dumbfounded new teacher, especially after she entangles herself with Frank in a one-night-stand scenario that can only end with withering sass. “Hellooo, Miss Steeeevenson,” Mary coos at her with the knowing tedium of roll-call, as the former emerges towel-clad from their bathroom.
If Slate actively lifts the movie, Octavia Spencer does it a huge favour merely by showing up, in the sketchy role of a fierce babysitting trailer-park neighbour who turns into a human barricade, fit for little in the last reel except crossing her arms to stop people getting in and out of doorways. Lindsay Duncan, meanwhile, isn’t inspired enough as Frank’s mother – a dictatorial English academic who wants to co-opt her granddaughter’s gifts just as she did her daughter’s.
Gifted wouldn’t have to be very different to be far better. It lets itself down with the intergenerational custody battle, repeatedly shoving us into scenes that feel like dull, dated TV. Perhaps the romance would have been a better front foot to stick with. The spark here is the exception rather than the rule, and sticking a Cap in it isn’t quite the answer.