The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet

Overview

Best known for his strange modern fairytales, including Delicatessen, Micmacs and, of course, Amelie, Jean-Pierre Jeunet has a particular talent for finding whimsy and madness in the everyday corners of life. He continues that habit in his English-language debut, The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet. Mark Twain by way of Jimmy Neutron, this oddball family film lays the syrup on thick, only to cut through the sweetness with a biting critique of America's cultural foibles.

Indeed, this flick is so loaded with tacky, tongue-in-cheek American iconography that it could have only been directed by a foreigner (and perhaps more specifically, a Frenchman). Cowboys, box-cars and the mighty Mississippi make up the landscape, as T.S. Spivet rides the rails from Montana to the nation's capital. There, he'll accept a prize from the Smithsonian institute for inventing a perpetual motion machine that could change the world as we know it. Not too shabby, given that he's only 10 years old.

The film is an adaptation of Reif Larsen's popular children's novel, The Select Works of T.S. Spivet. It's a natural fit for the imaginative Jeunet, who, like T.S. himself, has often found himself swimming against the tide. Here, his fanciful world consists of impossibly saturated colours, the entire frame cluttered with weird and wonderful stuff. Maps, graphs and diagrams float magically from the screen in 3D, giving us a glimpse at the gears and levers of our hero's brilliant mind.

Young Kyle Catlett does a marvellous job as the film's pint-sized protagonist, an undisputed prodigy but still very much a child. Much of the movie's humour is derived from his amusing, unfiltered observations of the colourful characters that inhabit his life — including his taciturn, bull-wrangling father (Callum Keith Rennie); distractible, entomologist mother (Helena Bonham Carter); and moody teenage sister (Niamh Wilson), who dreams of being a beauty queen.

His thoughts linger, also, on his twin brother Layton, who died the previous year while the two of them were playing with a gun. It's a sombre recurring note, one that ever-so-slightly sours the images of America's perpetually sunny heartland. So too does a conversation with a trucker (Julian Richings), with whom T.S. hitches a ride. An Iraq war veteran, the man tells his young travelling companion he signed up to see the world. He just wishes he hadn't had to kill people in order to do so.

It's only when the boy reaches D.C., however, that Jeunet launches into a full-blown comic satire. The arrival of the theretofore unknown child prodigy — and one with a tragically dead sibling to boot — sends the science world into a frenzy. Before long, trusting T.S. finds himself caught up in a press and public relations scrum, as grown men and women all try to exploit him for their own tawdry, selfish ambitions.

Still, while Jeunet can't help but poke fun, the film's primary tone is one of sincerity, humour and good grace, with a late scene between T.S. and his parents striking more of an emotional chord than you expect it to. The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet is the sort of rare family film that finds just the right balance between smarts and sentimentality. Great if you have clever kids, or are just a clever kid at heart.