On The Pleasure Of Repetition

i rented little man tate, jodie foster's directorial debut, a few months after it went to video. after unsuccessully trawling the shelves at the local movie rental outlet, on a whim, i decided to give little man tate a chance. jodie foster was one of my favorite actresses, having recently made the utterly fantastic silence of the lambs. it was an unusual choice for me. at the time, i was interested mostly in good suspense thrillers. so, it was a great surprise to me that i loved the movie. it's both clever and and funny, not to mention touching. did i mention that i am not usually a fan of 'touching' movies? maybe it's because i always feel patronized by their characteristic lack of subtlety.

jodie, as always is great, but the real surprise is the performance of adam hann-byrd. i don't often like 'precocious' child characters in american movies. the roles are almost always over-acted and over-directed, and often the characters seem more obnoxious than intelligent. i also despise the cliched saccharine quality of some of these characters. hann-bryd's performance suffers from none of these flaws. there's a lot going on behind the normally solemn expression on fred's face. hann-bryd makes fred believeable as a 7-year-old genius. the character is touchingly sweet. i'm almost gagging as i type that, but it's true.

there are a few loose ends in the script, but nothing really detracts from the overall quality of the movie. even its employment of cliched plot conventions doesn't tarnish the overall work -- the contrived removal of fred's protective mother, played by jodie foster, from the story for part of the movie, for example. there's still something fresh and original about the film that smoothes over these minor flaws. i rented it for a second time about ten years ago, and saw it again on cable this morning. my opinion of the movie hasn't changed. it's still funny and charming.