Little Man Tate

Released 1991
Stars Adam Hann-Byrd, Jodie Foster, Dianne Wiest, David Pierce, Debi Mazar, Harry Connick Jr.
Directed by Jodie Foster

Jodie Foster and Dianne Wiest star in Foster's engaging directorial debut. Single mom Dede Tate is doing her best to raise her brilliant-but-lonely son Fred on a waitress's salary. Jane Grierson (Wiest), something of an expert on being brilliant but lonely, spots Fred's genius and wants to enroll him in her school for the gifted. It's a simple story, but it is very well told. Foster and Wiest both give excellent, sensitive performances, conveying the selfishness in each character's desire to have Fred to herself as well as the pain in not being able to fulfill all his needs on her own. Adam Hann-Byrd gives a remarkable performance as Fred, showing his intelligence without getting precious about it. Foster already shows a steady directing hand, but the best moments are the more whimsical ones in which she reveals the quiet exhilaration of Fred's mental leaps, as when a pool game suddenly becomes a beautiful collision of lines and forces. The DVD version shows the film in its original widescreen format and includes commentary from Foster.

Summary by Ali Davis

This is a nice story about a brilliant, sweet, but lonely little boy. He's a child prodigy who isn't cutesy or arrogant, and he needs a hug after a bad dream. That may sound cutesy, but Adam Hann-Byrd's quiet performance prevents it. The science and art are handled well in the story, but the need for Fred and Jane to find fun is overdone. I think it would have been better if that storyline had been addressed sooner, since it was so obvious that was where the movie was going. The actual resolution of this is crammed into a rushed ending, which is particularly unsatisfactory for a movie that is so knowledgeable about gifted kids and the problems they face. Of course, some of that insight comes from Jodie Foster herself, who endured a childhood of being an acting prodigy. I think she used that knowledge to draw more poignancy from the story than another directory may have been able to. All in all, the story is a little too simple, but it's nicely told. --Bill Alward, April 7, 2002