ART AND ISSUES ARE ABSTRACT IN 'MY KID COULD PAINT THAT'.

Byline: BOB STRAUSS

>FILM CRITIC

When a diner at a Binghampton, N.Y., restaurant asked to buy one of the abstract paintings on the wall, the owner said that he'd have to ask the artist's mother how much it would cost. Seems that the work's creator, Marla Olmstead, was only 4 years old.

"My Kid Could Paint That" tracks the minor media frenzy that developed when word got out about the adorable little prodigy.

Documentarian Amir Bar-Lev charts the girl's skyrocketing career:

Over $300,000 worth of paintings were sold in a couple of months and the waiting list for new canvases was 70-deep, The New York Times weighed in, Jane Pauley gushed, and Crayola asked Marla to be their spokesmoppet.

But then things took a dire, fascinating turn. A "60 Minutes II" segment questioned whether Marla actually made the paintings alone or with help, probably from her dad Mark, a Frito Lay plant manager who started dabbling in art a year before his daughter was born. Efforts by both the news show and Bar-Lev's cameras to capture Marla creating a masterpiece only showed a playful child turning out the kind of formless mush any average preschooler fingerpaints. Even a special DVD commissioned by Mark and his wife Laura to prove that their daughter generated the more stylish squiggles looks like it would only convince people who want to be convinced -- or the visually unsophisticated.

And that's the unaddressed issue in this otherwise thorough documentary. Remember that first sale? The buyer apparently didn't know the picture was made by a child; he was just impressed by the composition of its swaths and slashes, its color contrasts and symbolic forms. In other words, what made it good art. And if the better paintings we see in the film are that good, my question is:

What does their provenance matter? It's not like anyone is claiming to have lost Rembrandts -- or Pollocks -- here.

Of course, many people can't distinguish fine art from kitsch, so for them the story of a cute little girl being as good as Kandinsky is far more intriguing than her work itself. Bar-Lev covers that story from every angle. People question whether the Olmsteads are good parents for exposing Marla to fame (even though such critics obviously wouldn't be interested had her parents not done so), then viciously attack them when the media smells scam (same hypocrisy). As it turns out, the gallery owner who became Marla's dealer is a bitter photorealist painter, and he hoped that her success would prove that all modern art is one big, money-grubbing hoax.

And then there's Bar-Lev himself, whose reportorial objectiveness is compromised by the Olmsteads' hope that by giving him access to their home and children, his movie will repair their reputation. This seems to make him more susceptible to whatever the Olmsteads are trying to pull -- and to me, at least, the artworks prove that something's not kosher. But Bar-Lev's conflict also renders him extraordinarily open to all possible interpretations of the, well, abstract facts, and as a result, "My Kid Could Paint That" leaves you hanging -- in the best way, as a multifaceted painting would.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

[e-mail]

MY KID COULD PAINT THAT - Three stars

>PG-13: language.

>Director: Amir Bar-Lev.

>Running time: 1 hr. 23 min.

>Playing: Laemmle Town Center 5, Encino; Laemmle Playhouse 7, Pasadena; Laemmle Sunset 5, West Hollywood; Landmark, West L.A.; Regency South Coast Village, Costa Mesa.

>In a nutshell: Interesting documentary becomes a debate on modern art and the purpose of the movie itself.

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Whether 4-year-old Marla Olmstead really painted her abstract artworks, if her parents were right to expose her to the media and what makes good art are all issues explored in the documentary "My Kid Could Paint That."