Little Man Tate

This review is an excerpt from my book “Killer B’s: The 237 Best Movies On Video You’ve (Probably) Never Seen,” which is available as an ebook on iBooks. If you enjoy this review, there are 236 more like it in the book (plus a whole lot more). Check it out! LITTLE MAN TATE: Fred (Hann-Byrd) could read at age two, and by the time he’s seven, it’s pretty obvious to his single mom Dede (Foster) that he isn’t like other kids. That she loves him is obvious—and that he’s starving for the kind of intellectual stimulation her working class lifestyle can’t provide for him is painfully obvious. Reluctantly, she allows him to go on a three-week road trip with other brilliant kids under the care and tutelage of Dr. Jane Grierson (Wiest), head of an institute for gifted youth. Fred performs head and shoulders above the others—but learns that “you can’t go home again.” Against her better judgment, Dede allows Fred to live with the fastidious Dr. G. for the summer. Disappointments and a near tragedy spur a mother and child reunion in which they share some practical wisdom of the heart. Discussion: “It’s not so much what he knows,” Jane’s assistant (Pearce) says of Fred with awe, “but what he *understands*.” Fred is the exact opposite of the other gifted kids: Where they are arrogant, shallow overachievers, Fred just wants to be a normal kid with friends. His genius is also his curse. Hann-Byrd—pale, aged-faced, sensitive and pensive—is a welcome relief from the typical annoyingly precocious TV kid. Wiest, too, is a wonder: a fussy, disciplined, brilliant but unblossomed bookworm, with no clue how to handle a child’s nightmare. And just as Fred is the flipside of the other kids, the tough, aggressively affectionate Dede (whose wisecracking is the only antidote to Fred’s dead serious demeanor) is the diametrical opposite of Jane. Jane lives life from the neck up; Dede just lives life. Dede is fiercely protective of her precocious prodigy, and her tender surrender of Fred is a visible sacrifice. She knows, though, that only together with Jane can their opposing spirits provide Fred the rounded development he needs—the only way he can become a balanced individual rather than just another warped wunderkind. Foster (a wunderkind herself in her directorial debut at age 28) goes beyond competent direction to show flashes of brilliance, as when we “see” the altered mental state of Fred’s genius at work.

Something is wrong people... So wrong, I remember this movie, but not so much, when I watch the trailer, it was not about little Tate, it was about the Wyans Little Man... :/