Back in the day, a sweet little film like this would have found a happy home as an Afterschool Special, which all three networks ran half a dozen times each year, from 1972 through 1996. The thoughtful dramas were topical and/or gently instructive, aimed at the tween demographic, often helping them navigate interpersonal relationships.
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| Callie (Lexi Perkel) is in seventh heaven when she visits the expansive university botany department where Mrs. G (Judy Greer) works, when not substitute teaching at the nearby middle school. |
More’s the pity, because Mabel is a quiet charmer.
We meet 11-year-old Callie (Lexi Perkel) as she carefully digs up a touch-sensitive Mimosa pudica fern in the forest near her Virginia home, and transplants it into a pot. She names it Mabel.
It’s a keepsake; her father, David (Quincy Dunn-Baker), has obtained a job in upstate New York, and this is moving day. The family — including mom Angela (Christine Ko) and Callie’s infant sibling — is leaving her beloved woodsy environment for the realm of strip malls and treeless suburban neighborhoods.
Callie’s bliss is botany. As the drive proceeds, looking out the rear seat window, she initially calls out the species of each passing clump of trees ... and then, a bit later, glumly recites the name of each big box store and its huge paved parking lot.
Callie’s early days in her new school are painful. She’s socially awkward and slightly withdrawn; fleeting efforts to fit in prompt only silent stares in an environment of established social cliques and lab partners. She’s also dismayed by the apathy shown by her sixth-grade science classmates, who seem to have no feeling for her style of intensely focused study.
On another note, Callie’s arrival delights next-door neighbor Agnes (Lena Josephine Marano), who similarly seems not to have any friends ... possibly because she comes on a bit strong. But the problem is that Agnes is “only” a lowly fourth-grader, and therefore beneath Callie’s notice.
Which, Angela quickly points out, is unkind.
Callie’s mostly unhappy school experience shifts when she spots a new substitute teacher pushing a cart laden with plants. Callie follows, winding up in an eighth-grade botany class taught by Mrs. G (Judy Greer).
Her teaching style is challenging and aggressive. She demands her students’ respect and attention, confounding them with all manner of plant lore. That makes Mrs. G awesome, in Callie’s eyes: everything she hopes to become. That she shouldn’t be “moonlighting” in an eighth-grade class is immaterial, and Mrs. G certainly doesn’t suspect anything, given that Callie is so quick to participate.
Callie seeks her out after class, and becomes intrigued by Mrs. G’s research with chrysanthemums. Callie devises an experiment ... but doing it properly will involve buying a lot of chrysanthemum plants.
By this point, Agnes has become a frequent companion, eager to please. Although Callie appreciates the company, there’s still a sense that she takes the younger girl for granted ... which can’t end well.
Hoping to broaden Callie’s horizons — while also “forcing” some socialization — David and Angela enroll her in golf lessons. (Callie’s initial reaction: The course is filled with invasive species.)
Ma and Goodwin’s story is a study of managing expectations, resisting snap assumptions, meeting people halfway, and recognizing — ultimately — that a square peg doesn’t need to be crammed into a round hole. The film delivers numerous gentle life lessons.
All the characters are nicely sketched, and well played by the ensemble cast. Perkel credibly handles Callie’s complex personality; we feel for her awareness that she doesn’t fit in, while remaining oblivious to her flaws of impatience, even recklessness.
Marano’s Agnes is a delightful, irrepressible bundle of energy: enthusiastic and eager to please, but also easily wounded. Both girls have deep feelings; whereas Callie tries to suppress them, Agnes wears hers on her sleeve.
Ko and Dunn-Baker are appropriately perceptive, kind and well-intentioned, as Angela and David attempt to address issues that arise ... while also insisting on punishing consequences, when appropriate.
Greer is an intriguing study. At first blush, Mrs. G seems an ideal “hero” for Callie to worship: knowledgeable, similarly focused, and willing to share. But there’s an edge of something else in Greer’s performance: a trace of unhappiness, or repressed anger. Much as we enjoy the way Mrs. G demands participation from her students, she seems too strict for eighth-graders.
Her behavior with Callie also doesn’t quite land in the “friendly” zone, feeling more like reluctant tolerance.
Jim Santangeli is just right as Agnes’ father, Brian: a nice guy who understandably feels a bit wary about Callie’s growing “hold” on his daughter.
Tom Kingston’s mellow score deftly compliments the emotion-laden storyline, and a jovial cover of Mason Williams’ “Classical Gas” adds pizzazz to a celebratory montage.
While the story doesn’t “conclude” in any sort of climactic sense — life is like that — it does come to a satisfying pause. Given that this is the feature debut from Ma, a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts — and, as it happens, Yo-Yo Ma’s son — he appears destined to a bright future as a filmmaker.
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