Gifted

After the suicide of his maths genius sister, Frank (Chris Evans) agrees to raise his niece (McKenna Grace) in a normal environment. However, when his niece's incredible talents come to light and mark her out as a child prodigy, Frank's overbearing mother (Lindsay Duncan) comes into their lives and a custody battle ensues.

At the very beginning of this film, McKenna Grace's character exclaims that she looks like a Disney character and the camera lingers ever so slightly on a dejected-looking Chris Evans. It's a reference to his career as Captain America and, in a lot of ways, that glaring lack of subtlety says more about the film than it's probably meant to. While Gifted is a sweet, enjoyable drama, there's an element of overreaching sentimentality and cloying emotionalism that's too big to ignore and prevents the film from landing properly.

Evans plays a textbook 'damaged hot guy' - he's actually called that in the film, incidentally - who is raising the daughter of his maths genius sister in a seaside town in Florida, far from the patrician life he once led. On her first day at school, we're introduced to both the character's intelligence and how she interacts with children of her age - which, not unsurprisingly, she can't relate to or communicate with. Both the script and Grace's performance do a good job of making the character precocious without being grating, and it's all warm and authentic in how it goes at her story.

It's only when the film shifts gears in the second act and Lindsay Duncan, Evans' on-screen mother and the antagonist, that the film begins to move into familiar territory. Where Evans is playing a human Captain America, Lindsay Duncan is playing an ice-queen who's obsessed with her daughter's legacy and, again, the film is unsubtle in how it approaches her motivations and pretty predictable in how they eventually play out. Still, both the chemistry between Evans, Duncan and the child McKenna feels unforced and natural, and there's a sense that they're all giving their best for the film. Meanwhile, the supporting cast of Jenny Slate, Octavia Spencer and Elizabeth Marvel all fill out their roles well - particularly Spencer and Slate, who give the film some texture in the quieter moments and take some of the weight off Evans and McKenna's performance.

The real winner of all this, however, is McKenna Grace, giving a stellar performance as the child prodigy and has a range and abilities far beyond her years. Several scenes in the film do, admittedly, tug at the heartstrings in a somewhat exploitative way - but her performance is that good that you don't really care in those moments.

Marc Webb - best known for (500) Days Of Summer - pulls away from his previous style of directing and instead opts for a hands-off, natural approach that works beautifully in context. The film is bathed in natural light, and the pacing and editing has a rhythm to it that carries it along nicely. Likewise, the music is deployed carefully around the film and pauses it when needed. As mentioned, the screenplay - which was on 2014's Black List - does have some problems with predictability and subtlety. It isn't necessarily a bad thing, because the film can only go in one direction, but there's some elements of Evans' character that feel a little too rote and bland.

Still, Gifted is a warm, charming film that offers a welcome respite in the middle of blockbuster season.