Four year-old Marla Olmstead is an artistic genius. Or is she? In My Kid Could Paint That, director Amir Bar-Lev profiles four-year old Marla Olmstead, an amazingly talented and prolific little girl whose abstract paintings caused a stir in the art world.  A native of Binghamton, New York, Marla and her family -- mother Laura, father Mark, and little brother Zane -- find themselves in the center of a media storm.

Discovered by gallery owner and artist Anthony Brunelli in 2004 and covered by columnist Elizabeth Cohen in the The Press & Sun Bulletin, Marla’s star rises quickly and soon people scramble to buy her paintings. However, attempts by media outlets such as Inside Edition to capture Marla on tape while painting her canvases proves fruitless. There’s always a reason, though, according to her loquacious and glib father Mark (a painter himself) who’s often with her when she paints.

But some people aren’t buying it. Among the doubting Thomases are Jane Pauley, who interviews her parents, and Charlie Rose. The latter’s 60 Minutes broadcast of February 23, 2005 ignited the controversy over the authenticity of Marla’s paintings and caused sales of her work to plummet. Is Marla a fraud? Is the father the painter?

My Kid Could Paint That impressed me because of its multi-faceted subject matter. The documentary isn’t merely a profile of an alleged child prodigy. Through interviews with art critics, collectors, gallery owners, and including media footage of Marla, this film also explores a number of related issues:

* What is modern art? Does it have any standards, and if so, who determines what they are? Is modern art nothing but a con game?

* The marketplace and the commoditization of creativity. The lucrative business of buying and selling art and it’s influence on creating an art work’s “street” value versus the piece’s intrinsic value.

* The artistic intelligencia. At auction houses Christies and Sotheby’s, big bucks are dropped regularly by art collectors, a sometimes gullible bunch eager to abdicate their common sense and their cold, hard cash to be on top of the latest trend.

* Exploitation. In her criticism of the 60 Minutes story, Cohen wrote, “It was really ugly journalism. To think that Charlie Rose would spend an hour on network television undoing someone who is 4 years old . . . You’ve got nothing better to put on a prime time news show?” But surely the possibility of fraud is relevant? Unfortunately, the media focused on an innocent toddler instead of on her parents, gallery representatives, and collectors whose motivations are at best naïve and at worst, selfish and exploitative.

Even Bar-Lev’s profession comes under scrutiny here. Several interviewees question the truth of documentaries; a form of filmmaking regarded as objective, but in reality sometimes highly subjective. In one scene, Bar-Lev turns the camera on himself to capture his doubts about the Olmsteads, making the director part of his own film. How can he remain objective when his doubts may color his perception?  Although Bar-Lev’s decision disturbed me, it reveals his humanity and honesty. I applaud him for that.

In My Kid Could Paint That, Bar-Lev gives us an entertaining, absorbing, and provocative look into the art world as well as a different version of the American Dream. He allows the story to unfold at a pace steady and sure enough to give each scene and issue time to develop, yet fast enough to propel the narrative forward and create suspense. It’s like a good mystery movie, a kind of “who done it” --  no pun intended.

Bar-Lev and editors Michael Levine and John W. Walter show-off their editing skills as well in several dramatic montage sequences involving the auction houses and hate-email scenes. But their talents are displayed most effectively in the riveting “Flowers” and “Ocean” montage. By looking at those two paintings by Marla side-by-side in the same frames as her earlier work, it’s hard to overlook differences in    style, technique, and manual dexterity.

In the end, you can’t help wondering about little Marla Olmstead. Did she or didn’t she paint those pictures? My own conclusion can be summed up by quoting the popular saying, “A fool and his money are soon parted.”

(Released by Sony Pictures Classics and rated "PG-13" for language.)

Review also posted at www.moviebuffs.com .