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Through the eyes of a exceptionally gifted child of seven, 'Little Man Tate' delivers a riveting insight of the loneliness, maturity, isolation and brilliance of what it is to be highly prodigious yet very young and how imperative it is to achieve a balance when educating and raising such children.

Fred (Adam Hann-Byrd) is a very special little boy. He is able to play complicated musical pieces, pen deep and meaningful poems, calculate complex mathematical problems at an age when his classmates are still learning to tie their shoes and mastering their alphabet. He's a child old before his time, capable of thoughts far beyond the average adult's understanding, but at the core of it all, he is still just a seven-year-old who wants to fit in at school and have friends. His mother Dede, played by Jodie Foster, determines the best way to raise her beloved son is to treat him like any other child to the extent that she never really acknowledges his gifts, whereas Jane Grierson (Dianne Wiest) is on the other end of the scale as a psychologist whose speciality is gifted children. Jane takes an interest in Fred, believing his intelligence must be nurtured even if it means plonking a tot of seven into a university full of young adults.

Jodie Foster and Dianne Wiest deliver strong, solid performances as two women who both love this child and just want what is best for him, even if their approaches are very different. However, it is Adam Hann-Byrd who steals the show as the lead character of Fred. He depicts the brilliance of the character as well as his awkwardness in dealing with both 'normal' contemporaries and fellow gifted children. He is wonderful in showing how Fred is just a kid who wants to be liked, and how he desperately needs the adults around him to provide him a balance between being treated like the seven-year-old he is while allowing his towering intellect to thrive.

This film takes us into the heart of what it is to be a child prodigy and how it can be both a gift and a curse. We see Fred surpassing his adult classmates in his university course yet he struggles to interact with peers his own age who are of average intelligence. Through him, it is easy to see that being perceived as 'normal' can be the greatest gift of all. It also highlights the abysmal state of the state education system in teaching such children.

I really recommend this film as it delivers this fascinating story in a manner that is bittersweet, touching and, at times, humorous. The characters are all interesting and likable and you can't help but feel for Fred's joys and woes.

I was mainly interested in this film because of the subject - the predicament of a child genius. Half way through it I was captivated, not so much by the subject(in part because of the way it was handled), but by the child genius himself. Adam Hann-Byrd is thoroughly captivating. Rendering a sympathetic performance, he's almost bewitching! He even looks a lot like Jodie Foster. And it's to her credit as a director for finding such a perfect little actor to play such a complex role. Jodie Foster herself gives a moving performance as a struggling mother who is suddenly made to feel incapacitated, both financially and mentally, as the mother of a child prodigy. Diane Wiest's choice of characters has always been interesting. From 'Edward Scissorhands' to 'Birdcage', 'Practical magic' and still other films, she's usually played characters who are slightly quirky, odd or non-conformist, with a touch of humor in them. Over here she plays to perfection the role of the demanding, independent mentor of Fred Tate with a warped emotional intelligence.

One grouse though...as far Diane Wiest's character is concerned. I think her role is too much of an extreme as compared to Jodie Foster's. At the end of the film, Wiest's character, Jane Grierson ends up looking sheepish, repenting and even stupid to an extent. The end is almost sort of an ode to perfect motherhood, decrying the failure of the poor mentor spending tons of money by taking prodigies under her wing. It seems to say, child prodigies don't need all that specialized atmosphere, don't need special benefits, when in fact they do. I'm not saying that they ought to be living in state-of-the-art cages where they will only interact with other prodigies. But they do need a lot of other benefits that ordinary schools which underestimate the intelligence of even "normal" people just cannot provide. Child geniuses need to be dealt with very sensitively, keeping in mind their advanced faculties all the time and an atmosphere has to be created for them to properly nurture their special gifts. Somehow this film, by showing Jane Grierson as obviously insensitive, indirectly puts forth a bad case for special training for child geniuses. The real test of motherhood and Dede's feelings of jealousy towards Jane would have been explored if Jane, along with her maternal feelings for Fred would have also been shown to be sensitive or considerate. Instead we are made to laugh at Jane because she offers Fred some brown fruit/veggie juice and he asks for Coke... So that's it. This film is good, not for the content or it's resolution, but for the acting. Kudos to Adam Hann-Byrd!

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.

Little Man Tate has it's moments. Fortunately, it doesn't run into the problems of other kid-oriented movies by falling into stereotype. If it did, Fred would have glasses and acne problems like every other geek. I am happy that they found a decent child actor to carry the weight of the production (much like Empire of the Sun). There just isn't that much to say about this movie other than that it appeals only to a selective few.

I will be honest, this could have been better and deeper, but Jodie Foster didn't want it to and so she winds up being the Virgin Mary in this movie. I know that doesn't make a lot of sense here, but if you see it you'll understand. Perhaps she is becoming an egotist. Still, between Revenge of the Nerds and this, I'll take this.

Overall, not necessary viewing, but you could do worse. 3 out of 5 stars.

I've long been a fan of Jodie Foster's acting, and upon my first viewing of "Little Man Tate", I can now say I'm a fan of her directorial talents as well.

The story is of Fred Tate, son of single mother Dede. It's found that, at the age of 2, Fred can already read the print on the bottom of a dinner plate. Dede, and the rest of the world, realize that Fred is a genius, but Dede is determined that Fred, while given ever opportunity to expand his gift, is not exploited by the well meaning, but pretentious head mistress of a school for gifted children, Jane Grierson, portrayed by the outstanding actress Dianne Wiest.

The story's told, mainly, through the eyes of Fred; however, we also see the viewpoints of Dede & Jane who each feel that she alone has Fred's best interests at heart. We are given tremendous insight into how Fred sees and relates to the world around him. He has the understanding that's beyond most adults but only the emotional experience of his 7 years of life.

Through Fred, we can see that the academic world of gifted children isn't just filled with the nice, polite, precocious, bespectacled children that we are often shown on news magazines or public television programs. We are allowed to see that some are as outright rude and pretentious as the adults who claim to be only nurturing their gifts.

In her feature-film directorial debut, Foster is able to capture the world as Fred sees it. She's able still allow us to see Fred as the youngster he is. Fred's intellect isn't the basis of the story, just one element in it. She lets the story do the work, and she let's the character's tell the tale. She allows the characters to be real people not just the stereotypes that so often are found in films dealing with this subject matter.

Jodie Foster's only directed two films since this one ("Home For The Holidays"-1995 & "Flora Plum"-2005), and I've seen "Home For The Holidays" which I also feel was very well done. It seems that Ms. Foster is being very careful in picking her projects, much like the late Stanley Kubrick did. I only hope her unique talents are recognized and she's given more green lights for future projects.