Scott Frank’s screenplay positions its lonely, brilliant worrywart hero (Adam Hann-Byrd) at the center of an emotional tug of war between two women. His working-class mother, Dede (Foster), a waitress, is there for him emotionally but can’t nurture his intellectual gifts, which range awesomely from physics and math to music and art. Child psychologist Jane Grierson (Dianne Wiest), a former prodigy herself, wants to pull him away from his mother and open new intellectual worlds to him. She represents Mind divorced from Instinct, illustrated in characteristically broad strokes by a silly scene in which she haplessly burns a meatloaf to a crisp.

Despite quirky, fresh moments and a watchful, touching performance from Hann-Byrd, the movie lurches unsteadily from scene to scene, punctuated by odd bursts of irrelevant melodrama and culminating in a happy ending that is frankly baffling. Apparently the boy’s mind/heart dilemma has been resolved. How? When? Why? Foster has neglected to show it.