Lumsdal Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Tayloriona Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

vincentlynch-moonoi To be honest, I'm a little disappointed in this film. Don't get me wrong...it's a good movie...but it did something that happens all often in films...it sort of left us hanging at end. All that story and then we're dismissed without knowing much about how things went on after that. And, the film does occasionally drag.However, there is a lot to like here. I liked the most important aspect of the film -- that there is a difference between loving a child and enriching a child. The mother here (Jodie Foster) could love, but not enrich. On the other hand the foundation leader (Dianne Wiest) could enrich, but not love.The cast here is great. Jodie Foster hits the target with her performance, as does Dianne Wiest (a very much underrated actress). Adam Hann-Byrd as the boy is superb. Harry Connick Jr. brought an interesting aspect to the story, but his role is so minor that it left me wanting more exploration of how the boy might interact with a very different type of adult. David Hyde Pierce...I would have liked a little more screen time, as well. I always enjoy Debi Mazar.The producers were brave here. This is not a film that would have a wide audience. Who would really like this film? Fans of Foster or Wiest. And people who are interested in, or involved with kids who have true giftedness (and that was me in my pre-retirement role as a principal in a school with a large gifted program...although not this gifted). If you fit in one of those categories, you will no doubt enjoy this film.

jc-osms I had to smile at the legend before the end titles - "A Jodie Foster Film" - one movie and she's an auteur! Nevertheless, this is an accomplished well acted, "little" film looking at the gift-cum-curse of being a gifted child in a largely misunderstanding world.To be fair, the movie looks little more than a better-than-average TV movie, but is elevated by its director's star turn in front of the cameras, plus some neat little (that word again!) directorial flourishes, like a slow cutaway into the distance of Foster's workaday waitress Dee Tate's mother/son dance with young son Fred and at other points interesting suffusions of light and animation to perhaps demonstrate the surging thought process of the precocious infant.The narrative gets a little skewered as Fred is adopted by a wealthy philanthropist female, childless naturally, whose feelings quickly move from professorial to matrimonial and a too obvious conflict with Foster's more down-home mother love. Some of the situations are a little too pat also, for instance the way that Fred cleaves to older boys, one a maths prodigy himself, the other a piano-playing college boy (played by a young Harry Connick Junior), the lad obviously groping emotionally for a male bonding relationship with his natural father nowhere around.Freak occurrences too like Connick's initial encounter with Fred (symbolically dropping the whole world on his shoulders!) and a side-lined Foster's rescue of a drowning child just as Fred's making an appearance at the professor's side on national TV also jar credulity a little and of course sentimentality rears its largely unwelcome head before the happy ending, but I'm perhaps being too severe on what is when all is said and done, a warm, family entertainment on an off-beat subject.

FilmCriticLalitRao It is rather unfortunate that "Little Man Tate" did not get all the success it deserved.It may be due to the fact that cinema enthusiasts in USA and elsewhere were not at ready to receive such kind of a different yet intelligent film.This charming,poetic,out of the box film was like a bolt from the blue for them.The problem is that most of the times people are interested in pure Hollywood films or in uncommon,peculiar independent films from USA.Little Man Tate did not belong to any of these categories as Jodie Foster created a film which could not be easily pigeonholed.This film's star attraction is young actor Adam Hann Byrd who gives astounding performance as young genius Fred Tate.As Jane Grierson,Fred Tate's educator,Dianne Wiest too plays an important role in the film.We get to see glimpses of Fred Tate's turbulent life which gets metamorphosed when he is found to have qualities of a creative genius at a very young age.His life takes a turn for the worst when he finds that his stature of precocious child has deprived him of his natural growth and a normal childhood.Little Man Tate is good film for all those who would like to be enlightened, entertained,educated and motivated.

ccthemovieman-1 This story is a realistic account (I admit, I am assuming) of what it must be like to be a child genius, not fitting in with kids your own age nor with older kids. It must really be difficult for all involved.Adam Hanna-Byrd, as "Fred," is the star of the show and plays that young kid. Jodie Foster plays his mother. The kid's a neat little guy and the main adult characters, played by Foster and Dianne Wiest, are interesting, too. The latter plays the head mistress of a school for gifted children. She and Foster clash a lot about how to bring up the child.The only thing that marred this film was the language. There is too much profanity (six usages of the Lord's name in vain, for example) for a "family film" like this. There is no reason for all of it in a thoughtful, kid-themed movie. Anyway, it's still worth a look.It's nice to see Hanna-Byrd, in real life, is living much more of a normal existence, having gone to college and graduating in 2004