TBJCSKCNRRQTreviews Review of Little Man Tate

Little Man Tate (1991)

A good film that could have been great, had it not been pushed to be mainstream

[7/10 · 13 October 2004]

Before I go on with this review, let me share exactly why a film like this means so much to me, and why I can relate so much to it. The film is about a boy genius, a young man with exceptional intelligence and skills. I don't think it's ever clearly stated in the film, but his personality and his intelligence points to him being an autist. Now, suffering(what a misdirecting word... like it's a disease or something) from a mild case of autism myself, being diagnosed with asperger syndrome, I can relate to the kid on a very personal level. However, the film has been pushed into being a mainstream drama, instead of being, shall we say a good one(or, at least an accurate one). The personality of the kid is accurate, but not all of his symptoms are. I actually saw a TV special, which involved a real person, a teenager, diagnosed with asperger syndrome. During the ten minutes that the special lasted, I learned more about being an asperger, recognized more of my own personality traits, and realized more about myself and being an asperger than I did through the 90 minutes of this film. It holds a lot of truth, but too much of it is watered down and forced into being mainstream, in which everything has to end fine and dandy, and in which everything has to make perfect sense. Maybe the film should have been longer; maybe it should just have been less mainstream, and more deep. I don't know. The film just lacks something. Everything in the film just immediately evokes some outbursts of "Aww" "Ohh", and doesn't really spark any further thought in the subject. I suspect that, was such a statistic made, most people who saw this film would prove to have done no further research or give no further thought into the subject of autism. And that's just the problem with the film. It evokes the emotions that it's supposed to, but that's it. Afterwords, everyone forgets about it, and gives it no further thought. Just like the audiences of mainstream dramas want; an hour and a half of emotions and drama, and then to return to their normal, everyday lives, with no new experiences or even the notion of thinking about autism, or any other non-commercial subject. However, apart from that, the film is well done. The plot is good. The pacing is good enough. 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. The child actor was a pleasant surprise, and truly delivered a believable performance. The characters are well-written and credible. I like that there is no definite "bad guy"; both Foster and Wiest mistreat the child, and mistake what he wants with what they want themselves. The graphics that are done to show when the kid concentrates on something or figures something out in a particular way are good, well done, and give a pretty good image of what it's like to be gifted and figuring something out much faster than a "normal" person could. Of course they're oversimplified, but what would you expect from a mainstream film? I suspect an independent film dealing with the subject would have been much better. All in all, if you're interested in the subject, it's decent, but I would recommend looking up the real information about it instead. If you have no knowledge of the subject, you can watch the film; just don't expect everything in it to be true. If you don't care about the subject, you can just watch it as you would any other mainstream drama. I recommend it to fans of dramas, but I warn anyone who knows a lot on the subject to approach with caution and take the film lightly. 7/10