Little Man Tate
Tags: depressing

Plot synopsis:
Dede Tate (Jodie Foster) is a single mother, a working-class woman of average intelligence raising her seven-year-old son, Fred (Adam Hann-Byrd), who shows every indication of being a genius. Fred's reading and mathematics abilities are remarkable, and he plays the piano "at competition level," but his intellect isolates him from his public school classmates.
Fred's intellect comes to the attention of Jane Grierson (Diane Wiest), a former music prodigy and now a psychologist running a school for gifted children. She seeks permission from Dede to admit Fred to the school in order to develop his intellectual gifts in a way that a public school cannot. Dede is reluctant, preferring that Fred have a normal upbringing but when no one comes to Fred's seventh birthday party, Dede consents.
Fred fits in better at the institute, and he meets one of his heroes who is one of Jane's prized pupils, the brilliant but slightly bizarre "Mathemagician" Damon Wells (P.J. Ochlan), a whiz at math who wears a black cape wherever he goes. After unintentionally upstaging Damon at a competition for gifted youth, Fred is enrolled at a university where he studies quantum physics while his mother, aunt and cousins travel to Florida for the summer. Damon is an unruly child at first, but warms up to Fred when out horseback riding, and is Fred's first insight to a world outside academia when Damon tells him, "it is not how much IQ a man has; it is how he uses it". Jane attempts to become more nurturing, but is unable to relate to Fred as anything other than a case study. An adult student named Eddie (Harry Connick Jr.) accidentally hits Fred with a globe when goofing around. To make it up to Fred, Eddie takes Fred out for a ride on his moped and shows him events like shooting pool, which improves Fred's personality spending time with someone who is not a genius. However, when Fred by mistake comes to Eddie's room when he is in bed with a coed, Fred runs out. Eddie chases after him, then says he cannot be a babysitter to Fred; while he enjoys Fred's company, he says that Fred needs to find friends closer to his age. The return to isolation takes a toll on Fred, as he suffers from nightmares where he is viewed as a freak.
Jane is asked to bring Fred onto a panel discussion show on the topic of gifted children, but Fred breaks down. He claims his mother is dead, and recites a childish poem (a word for word repetition of a poem by one of his former grade school classmates) before taking off his microphone and walking out of the studio. Dede witnesses some of this as it is broadcast and flies back to New York. Jane is unable to find Fred, but Dede discovers him back at their apartment and embraces him.
One year later, Fred has adjusted to the pressures of being a child genius, particularly after an even younger student is admitted to Jane's school. Dede hosts a well attended birthday party for him, reconciling Fred's emotional development with his intellect.

Review: The story shows beautifully what a thousand articles on math prodigies cannot- that even geniuses need love and that no matter how "genius" that child is he is still only a kid.
Jodie foster has done a great job when she shows Dede's reaction and then later Jane's reaction to the fact that Fred has had a nightmare.I hope to be able to see more movies from her..
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
Little Man Tate was one of my favorite movies as a child, I don't know why, but maybe because my grandmother and I bonded over this movie, it's just special to me.
But Fred is discovered by Jane Grierson, a professor of highly intelligent and gifted children, giving Fred the chance to expand his world and even takes him to college at a young age.
Fred meets interesting characters throughout his journey learning that maybe life has more to offer than what he used too.Little Man Tate is a very good movie and very charming.
The film is also a showcase for Wiest's quirky charms, she adds much humanity to a character who on the surface is unlikable, although it is Foster who gives the more subtle performance.
Jodie Foster is wonderful as the loving but uneducated mother and Harry Connick Jr. has his first screen role in a major motion picture!.
The emotional needs of these children often go unattended, as the parents usually struggle to satisfy the intellectual needs.Jodie Foster gives a fantastic performance as a mom under the aforementioned circumstances.Many may consider the ending weak, if they are unable to demonstrate the ability to see beyond the story itself.
Jodie Foster's debut as a filmmaker shows a little boy genius, who we've all seen before.
The conflict between Jodie Foster, the mother, and Dianne Wiest, the child genius grown up, is somewhat annoying, but it makes sense, as they are both extremes of parenting.
The child in this movie plays it superbly, as does Foster and Wiest.
"Little Man Tate" is a heartwarming, at times poignant, story of a precocious and highly intelligent little boy named Fred Tate (Adam Hynn Bird) incapable to develop sane relationships with his entourage, especially kids his age.
His best friend is his mother, a twenty-something free-spirited single woman named Dede and played by a young Jodie Foster, he calls her by her name as if that complicity was a way to make up for the lack of real buddies.
But like in a math riddle, just because you can tell what the problem is doesn't mean you've got what it takes to solve it.Fred tries his best to have ersatz of contacts with the other kids.
As they say "travels broaden the mind" and that's what she tries to do.There is not much of a plot except a fascinating coming-of-age story revolving around the 'love' triangle between Jane who's obviously fascinated by Fred and is convinced she can help him to find his way and Dede who can't stand the way he's treated like some sort of a circus freak.
It's like "Good Will Hunting" with Wiest in the Skarsgard and Foster in the Williams' roles, but with maternal love at stakes.
But these relationships never last and tend to project the same reality to Fred: he needs a real mother and real friends.Jane doesn't even seem capable to play a mother role, as she was too focused on the intelligence of her children she couldn't reach the intelligence of the heart, and Dede can't reach her son's mind.
Jodie Foster was an appropriate director for she was a gifted child and maybe the character of little Fred was a way to let some repressed feelings steam off and reveal the curse of being below the others.This is a 'little film' by the usual standards, in 1991, Jodie Foster would be more noted for her performance as Clarice Starling in "Silence of the Lambs" but the acting and yes, the directing, provide very interesting characters, so deep and real we actually care for them and wish they can find the strength to overcome these kind of puzzling dilemmas where everyone is both right and wrong.
I only wish the resolution was handled in a better way, it seems that the film didn't care for a climax and things seemed to have been fixed by themselves as we couldn't tell what happened between the TV incident and the birthday party that concluded the film.There must have been some off-screen reconciliation or deep discussions but we never get to know them, maybe it was a deliberate choice, an artistic license from Foster, telling us to give this little kid a break and accept that he could finally be a happy little boy.
I guess I longed for more complexity but despite that little faux-pas, this is a movie that I enjoyed as a kid, and realized that it still held up very well with my adult mind..
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..
It must really be difficult for all involved.Adam Hanna-Byrd, as "Fred," is the star of the show and plays that young kid.
The kid's a neat little guy and the main adult characters, played by Foster and Dianne Wiest, are interesting, too.
I remember that day /later in after noon Jodie Foster was directing ,but you would have never known her as she was dressed kinda in disguise I was proud to be ask by Queen City Metro Supervisors if I wanted to participate in this movie called 'Little Man Tate"I thought the movie was made very good and Jodie Foster's direction was great While I've never seen the whole Movie I may go out and get it and watch it all the way throughYou don't know how much hard work these actors and directors do until your up close to watch them workThank you for stopping by to read meDaniel Freeman Cincinnati OHio. Tough Being 'Different'.
"Little Man Tate" dramatizes the plight of a "super-gifted" seven-year-old, subtly played by Adam Hann-Byrd.
Little Fred Tate must cope not only with normal problems of childhood but also his extraordinary mental gifts which set him far apart from fellow children his age.
After feeling a lack of empathy from his mother (caringly portrayed by Jodie Foster) and his teacher-mentor (sensitively executed by Dianne Wiest) Fred reaches out to a college student who befriends him.
Director Jodie Foster (who also stars as Tate's mother) does a good job of guiding us through all the complicated emotions inherent in this story, but intentionally veers off track at the end, giving us a really happy ending that feels like a cheat.
Foster as an actress does a good job (although her character's trashy mouth gets tiresome), but Dianne Wiest is unable to come up with anything surprising as Fred's mentor (who, too easily, is shown to be brilliant but lonesome herself).
'Little Man Tate' is nicely directed by first time-director Jodie Foster.
He plays Fred Tate, a seven year old kid who happens to be a genius.
Jane Grierson (Dianne Wiest) is a woman who helps the highly intelligent kids in a special school.
Dede only sees the kid-side, Jane only sees the genius-side.A very nice film with great performances, especially by Adam Hann-Byrd.
The film is about a boy genius, a young man with exceptional intelligence and skills.
The acting is very good; the three leads, Foster, Wiest and Hann-Byrd(the child actor) all do their jobs well, all give good performances.
Typical little genius boy story, all he needs is love blah blah blah...Weist, Foster, and Adam Hann-Byrd all give excellent performances despite the often hackneyed material.
Jodie Foster doesn't come across as gum-chewing, cherry pit-spitting, carefree, loving mom who doesn't know how to deal with a genius son.
I would have expected more from a movie that was somewhat autobiographical for Jodie Foster, who was a bright Hollywood kid, one who had intelligence and sensitivities beyond her age.
A good drama movie,with a touching story about a brilliant mind trapped inside the body of a little boy.
The little boy"Fred Tate" is excellent played by Adam Hann-Byrd,he deliveres a performance which can only be measured whith Haley Joel Osmond in the Sixth Sense.
Jodie Foster also delivers a great performance,she has also directed this movie.The movie shows how difficult it can be to be different.It tells the story about Fred Tate who is only a little kid,but also genious(unlike anything you have seen),he can solv any mathematic and is also a poet and an art artist,but unfortunantly he has no friends,except his mother(who dont understand his potential).
I also very much liked the character of Eddie, played by Harry Connick, Jr. Of all the characters, including both Dede and Jane, he did the best job of relating to the boy at exactly the right level of understanding and experience, also not afraid to be always truthful with him --- including when it came to telling Fred that he was incapable of being the (father) figure he needed and deserved..
Dede Tate (Jodie Foster) is an unconventional single mom to awkward and brilliant nice kid Fred.
Jane takes him to college where he befriends Eddie (Harry Connick Jr.) after getting hit with a globe.It's a fine family drama most notable for being Jodie Foster's directorial debut in a full length movie.
I did remember that it is about a gifted seven year-old named Fred, whose mother (played by Jodie Foster) tries to bring him up in the real world.As a kid genius, he sees his abilities are more advanced than normal than people in his age group; I thought the scene where a few adults looking over Fred's shoulder at his test during class was pretty funny.
Jodie Foster directs a wonderful tale about a child prodigy.
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..
Adam is great; a promising actor.Fred Tate (Adam Hann-Byrd) is a 7-year-old genius that is invited to attend the 'Odyssey of the Mind' program run by Jane Grierson (Dianne Wiest).
His mother Dede (Jodie Foster) is reluctant to send him there, but at last consents when she accepts the fact that her son needs more than she can give him.I highly recommend this movie.
Directing her first movie ever, Jodie Foster strikes the hearts of viewers with this engaging film about a unique mother-son relationship.
In "Little Man Tate",  Foster plays the role of Dede Tate, a single mother struggling to provide for herself and her ingenious son, Fred (Adam Hann-Byrd), who is modestly aware of his talents, but simply wants to be accepted by his peers; to be `normal'.
Dianne West plays the role of Jane Grierson, the director of a special school for gifted children, who notices Fred's abilities and wants him to join her group on a trip to academic competitions.
Not only Jodie Foster has proven herself a great actress, she comes up with this special movie and shows she can also direct in a fantastic way.
Well played out film with Foster and crew giving flawless performances..
Little Man TatePeople prefer smart children because smart teenagers are assholes.Luckily, the wunderkind in this drama is still cute enough not to be a jerk.Dede (Jodie Foster) is a single mom struggling to raise her gifted 7-year-old Fred (Adam Hann-Byrd) on her own.
Meanwhile, Jane moves to exploit Fred's talents on TV while his mom is on summer vacation.Although a typical child prodigy movie, right down to the annoying kid genius, this Jody Foster directed picture manages to capture the pressure put on both phenoms and parents to succeed.
There are many memorable scenes throughout the movie, and Foster's direction shows a true understanding of the film-making process.
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.
The mother here (Jodie Foster) could love, but not enrich.
Jodie Foster hits the target with her performance, as does Dianne Wiest (a very much underrated actress).