Gifted Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.0

Gifted Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 29, 2017

It’s only fair that I mention Hidden Figures in the opening of this review, since I mentioned Gifted in the opening paragraph of my Hidden Figures Blu-ray review. Hidden Figures begins with a vignette involving a child math savant, one whose brilliance is probably threatened by the fact that she’s both female and African American, not to mention being raised in the rural south of the United States in the 1920s. As I mentioned in the Hidden Figures review, whatever trauma little Mary Adler (Mckenna Grace) experiences in Gifted, this particular math savant at least has the good fortune to be caucasian and living in contemporary times when an understanding of specially endowed intellects is hopefully better developed. That said, Mary’s life is anything but settled, with a late mother who committed suicide and a guardian uncle named Frank (Chris Evans) who is attempting to give Mary a normal childhood despite her immense brilliance, but who is himself attempting to deal with various issues. Gifted is a return to smaller scale stories for director Mark Webb, who figuratively joined Evans in the Marvel Cinematic Universe when, after receiving considerable critical acclaim for (500) Days of Summer, he perhaps bit off more than he could chew with The Amazing Spider-Man and its follow up The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Gifted is decidedly on the rote side from any number of standpoints, but it connects with the audience in a way that Webb’s putative blockbusters were never able to.

There are both overt and subliminal connections to Hidden Figures in a couple of ways, though Gifted forsakes Hidden Figures’ “based on a true story” ambience for something that some may perceive as a kind of Lifetime made for television movie aspect. Both films of course deal with math geniuses, and feature at least vignettes devoted to children solving insanely difficult problems (replete with “POV” shots taken from a blackboard’s perspective), but Gifted’s main conceit keeps the focus on the child, rather than moving on to her in her adult phase. As I mentioned in the Hidden Figures review, the appearance of Octavia Spencer in both films may perhaps unavoidably link the two films in some viewers’ minds, though in this case Spencer is less of a math prodigy and more of a surrogate mother figure to little Mary.

The Lifetime element intrudes both in the form of Mary’s teacher Bonnie Stevenson (Jenny Slate), who tries to convince Frank to place her in a school for gifted children but who ends up falling for Frank, as well as a later (and linked) melodramatic aspect when Frank’s estranged mother Evelyn (Lindsay Duncan) gets involved and wants to yank custody from him in order to facilitate Mary being more “properly” educated.

It’s here that Gifted tips over into overheated plot machinations that actually deprive the film of what it’s obviously aiming for: three hankie tear jerker emotional catharsis. The film’s kind of weird if perhaps understandable emphasis on a certain math problem that Mary’s late mother had been attempting to solve (and which at least indirectly led to her death) is also probably overly and needlessly specific, drawing attention away from the relationships between Frank and the three females in his life whose competing interests pull him in different directions.

If the film’s basic plot outlines are both hackneyed and overly contrived, the film is saved by some really winning performances. Evans is pretty far removed from his superhero persona here, and makes Frank a slightly gruff but lovable presence, and it’s wonderful to see Slate in a less neurotic guise than she evinced in Obvious Child. Little Mckenna Grace, who already has a lengthy list of credits (as an Oregonian whose news anchor wife helped break this story, I can’t wait to see her as a young Tonya Harding in the upcoming I, Tonya), is front and center throughout Gifted and rarely misses a beat, bringing some real feeling emotional content to scenes which might otherwise feel unnecessarily manipulative (like a central sequence where Frank is forced to hand her over to foster care). Only Lindsay Duncan as the harridan Evelyn seems unable to break through some of the strictures Tom Flynn’s screenplay has saddled her with.

The major problem underlying Gifted is that everyone, including Evelyn, is obviously well intentioned, if out to nurture Mary in decidedly different ways. That makes some of the contrivances involving custody needlessly melodramatic, something that in turn makes the expected “happily ever after” coda feel tacked on and inauthentic. Still, the film probably will tug at most heartstrings fairly effectively, and it’s fun to see Evans save at least a little piece of the world without having to don spandex.

Gifted Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Gifted is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.40:1. Shot on good old fashioned film with Arricams, Gifted looks great in high definition, bolstered by its locations which offer lots of sumptuous outdoor environments which director Marc Webb and cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh exploit regularly. Many of the outdoor scenes feature impressive depth of field and some pretty gorgeous scenes of water and sun. The palette is typically natural looking, with a warm and inviting presence that features excellent saturation. Probably at least somewhat attributable to the generally bright lighting, detail levels are routinely high, even in midrange shots. Perhaps because of the prevalence of those brightly lit sequences, a couple of the film's interior scenes look just a little less fulsomely detailed, with some slightly murky shadow definition.

Gifted Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Gifted features a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track which, like the visual presentation, gains a lot of its energy from the film's Florida locales. Frank's work as a boat repairman gets the film out and about regularly, with some excellent placement of ambient environmental sounds creating a lifelike atmosphere. There's a perhaps overuse of source cues, but they also spread through the surround channels winningly. The bulk of the film is quieter dialogue scenes, though, and while those don't really bristle with immersive tendencies, they're offered with excellent fidelity and good prioritization.

Gifted Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 8:13)


• Promotional Featurettes

  Gifted: HBO First Look (1080p; 13:32)

  Story (1080p; 2:08)

  An Accomplished Task (1080p; 2:06)

  Inside the Equation (1080p; 1:37)

  Marc's Method (1080p; 1:27)

• On Location: Gifted (1080p; 1:57) offers a brief look at some of the locations used in the film.


• Gallery (1080p; 2:05) features both a Manual Advance and an Auto Advance option. The timing is for the Auto Advance option.


• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2:29)

Gifted Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

My colleague Brian Orndorf was considerably less won over by Gifted than I was, as evidenced by his review of the film's theatrical exhibition. Virtually every one of the issues Brian addresses in his review are correct (in my not so humble opinion), but I was simply too taken by the performances in the film to ever quibble that much with what is an overly contrived and needlessly melodramatic screenplay. The film offers a wonderful trio of performances from Evans, Slate and (especially) Grace, and a lot of the one note aspect of Duncan's work has to be attributed to less than artful writing. All of this said, Gifted may not qualify for whatever the cinematic equivalent of being placed in a TAG program would be, but it's a solid piece of entertainment that should hit the mark for many viewers. Recommended.