Gifted

A boat mechanic (Chris Evans) is raising the 6-year-old daughter (McKenna Grace) of his late sister. When the girl shows signs of having inherited her mother’s genius for mathematics, it catches the attention of the grandmother she’s never met (Lindsay Duncan). This in turn leads to a custody struggle between mother and son, who have been long estranged because he blames her for the suicide of the girl’s mother. Got all that? Tom Flynn’s script has enough soap opera, maudlin sentimentality and button-pushing melodrama for a dozen Lifetime Channel movies of the week. Director Marc Webb marshals a good cast (including Jenny Slate doing double-duty as Grace’s teacher and Evans’ love interest, and Octavia Spencer underused as a caring neighbor), but the movie is too slick and manipulative for its own good. J.L.