Product Details

• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Original recording reissued, NTSC
• Language: English, French
• Rated: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
• VHS Release Date: October 3, 2000
• Run Time: 99 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00004WIBA
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #396,473 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Jodie Foster and Dianne Wiest star in Foster's engaging directorial debut. Single mom Dede Tate is doing her best to raise her brilliant-but-lonely son Fred on a waitress's salary. Jane Grierson (Wiest), something of an expert on being brilliant but lonely, spots Fred's genius and wants to enroll him in her school for the gifted. It's a simple story, but it is very well told. Foster and Wiest both give excellent, sensitive performances, conveying the selfishness in each character's desire to have Fred to herself as well as the pain in not being able to fulfill all his needs on her own. Adam Hann-Byrd gives a remarkable performance as Fred, showing his intelligence without getting precious about it. Foster already shows a steady directing hand, but the best moments are the more whimsical ones in which she reveals the quiet exhilaration of Fred's mental leaps, as when a pool game suddenly becomes a beautiful collision of lines and forces. The DVD version shows the film in its original widescreen format and includes commentary from Foster. --Ali Davis

From The New Yorker

Fred Tate (Adam Hann-Byrd) is a seven-year-old intellectual prodigy who lives with his single, working-class mother, Dede (Jodie Foster). The screenplay, by Scott Frank, presents the young hero as one unhappy whiz kid: Fred's public-school education doesn't challenge him, and his classmates treat him like a freak. Nobody comes to his birthday party. The picture (which was directed by Foster) is frustrating because it seems reluctant to explore with any rigor the special problems that a boy like Fred might have. The filmmakers keep falling back on pathos and on the easy irony that the main character is, despite his extraordinary gifts, an ordinary boy with the normal emotional needs of any seven-year-old. By the end of the movie, his precocious intelligence has lost its distinctive qualities, and he's no more than an exotic variant of a standard type: the lonely, misunderstood kid who yearns for love and acceptance. Our interest in Fred actually diminishes in the course of the picture; Frank and Foster introduce a unique hero and then spend two hours stripping him of his individuality. Also with Dianne Wiest, David Hyde Pierce, P. J. Ochlan, and Harry Connick, Jr. -Terrence Rafferty
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Never get tired of watching this movie..., February 6, 2005

By 

Chayse (British Columbia, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Little Man Tate (DVD)

Well, I don't know all those technical things about whether a movie is good or not. I don't worry about how good the directing is, or even how good the script is. And sure, it can get a little (ok, a lot) annoying if the acting in a movie is bad, but all I really care about is whether I like the movie or not. I loved this movie from the first time I saw it, and my husband likes it too. Maybe it's considered a drama, but there are so many cute, funny moments in the movie that make LMT so very enjoyable. And Fred is so adorable. :o)

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars THE VAGARIES OF GENIUS, August 6, 2004

By 

Shashank Tripathi (Gadabout) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Little Man Tate (DVD)

Genius does not herd with genius, said Oliver Wendell Holmes, but come to think of it it does not herd with anyone at all. Little Man Tate charts the solitary prodigious existence of a pint-sized 6-year old, gifted beyond the regular rations allocated to ordinary men.

The story is as hackneyed as can be: a working class mother fiercely protective of her little brainiac, wants him to do well, so despite sparks with school psychologist lets him take part in bigtime contests for special kids, where he meets people of all kinds, etc etc. You get the picture.

Or may be you don't. The proof is in the pudding. Debuting as a director, Jodie Foster nails the production quality. The cinematography is fabulous. While parts of the script are predictably cheesy, all the characters are generally pleasant, the emotional scenes are moving, and all the interactional contretemps resolve neatly in the end.

And the message is heartening: even if he is more "grown up" than the rest of his Peter Pan peers, Fred is not special in every way. He is just as needy of a mother's affection, a teacher's direction and the companionship of regular social groups.

Plain stuff, but very efficiently delivered. Recommended rental.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Genius re-gaining childhood, October 25, 2000

By 

Graham Little (London, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Little Man Tate [VHS] (VHS Tape)

A child genius who lives with his now single mother, both of whom enjoy a fruitful, loving relationship, despite the life the young boy leads. A classic film that allows an understanding for people of not only the way youngsters are graded, tested, and pushed beyond their years, but also an insight to how the class "square" might have felt when you were at school. A brilliant directed film, and a definite must watch.