Smart People is yet another small indie movie reminding the audience that smart people aren’t necessarily happy, well-adjusted people. The audience would be excused for taking away from most cinema the understanding that only those too stupid to realize how horrible the world is are actually happy. So if you’re the type who really prefers to save your movie money until you can spend it on something that’ll at least let you leave the theater as happy as when you entered, go ahead and stop reading this review and assume that at best you’ll let Smart People languish at the bottom of your Netflix queue among the movies you feel you should watch but don’t actually want to watch.
If you’re OK with a little bit of downer in your movie diet, then there is some redemption to be found in Smart People, though it is still hard to make a recommendation stronger than “move it of the middle of your Netflix queue and let it slowly slide to the top.”
Director Noam Murro and screenwriter Mark Poirier are both making their debuts in those roles with this movie. As such it is a promising first effort. Neither one makes any grand mistakes (though the pacing is a little slow as evidenced by overheard comments when exiting the screening that this 90-minute film was “a bit too long”) but they also never really stretch their necks out into new territory. After getting some OK buzz at Sundance earlier this year, it was something of a surprise when Miramax purchased the distribution rights and fast-tracked it for spring release.
The smart people in question are widowed professor Lawrence Wetherhold (Dennis Quaid), his conservative Stepford daughter Vanessa (Ellen Page), his adopted slacker brother Chuck (Thomas Haden Church), and an emergency room doctor named Janet (Sarah Jessica Parker). The movie quickly establishes Lawrence as a misanthrope by having him do a most hated thing during the opening credits: he parks his old beater diagonally across two parking spaces so nobody will scratch it. Poof—instant karma—and one knows instantly this is a character that is going to have to earn the audiences sympathy. Who cares that he doesn’t know any of his students’ names or that he resets his office clock to avoid office hours. He parks poorly on purpose!
When this gets his car towed, he gives himself a concussion falling to the pavement while trying to climb the fence at the impound lot and it is at the ER that he meets Janet, a student nearly a decade earlier. Since the head injury temporarily gets his license revoked, Lawrence’s shiftless adopted brother Chuck moves in to act as chauffeur. His overachieving daughter Vanessa doesn’t like Chuck, and she doesn’t like the idea of her dad dating again.
Thus, all of the cards are set for everybody to engage in a lot of self discovery and come out the other end of the movie better people. Except, to a large extent, that isn’t where the movie is trying to take us. It simply settles for showing the process of discovering that in the course of fulfilling ambition, the greatest sin is losing track of why you wanted it in the first place. It isn’t being smart that makes these people unhappy but rather having ambition without purpose.
Ellen Page grabs your attention and doesn’t let go every time she is on screen as Vanessa. To a large extent the character is very similar to her Academy Award-nominated role last year in Juno—just avoid the pregnancy and flip her to the other end of the political spectrum. Fortunately, though, it is an interesting character and listening to her deliver lines is a joy. One wonders how long the 20-year-old actress will be able to make hay playing precocious high school students, though.
The only time anything on screen competes with her is when Thomas Haden Church—another scene stealer given scene-stealing super powers by a grotesque mustache—is up there with her. In addition to his role driving Lawrence around town, he takes it on himself to try and get Vanessa to loosen up—and he succeeds beyond his intentions. Page and Church have several good scenes here and it left me wishing that maybe the movie had been primarily focused on this relationship instead of the duller one between Quaid and Sarah Jessica Parker.
Dennis Quaid also does a very good job, disappearing into his unhappy, misanthropic, character. Quaid physically withdraws into himself and perhaps succeeds too much in becoming a small man, since he fades into the background whenever Page and Church are around. It is another piece of evidence, though, that Quaid is only improving as, at nearly 55, he settles into being an elder statesman of Hollywood.
The only weak spot among the cast is Sarah Jessica Parker. This is both her fault and the fault of the writer/director. They never really give her anything to make it clear what exactly she sees in Quaid’s frumpy professor, so it is all on her to convince us that she really does like him. Unfortunately, she doesn’t pull it off and the movie is dangerously weakened for it. The entire group doesn’t need to transform to Ozzie and Harriet by the end of the movie, but it is necessary to leave the theater believing there is some chance that the relationship is a keeper.
There is a line from Vanessa that Lawrence’s relationship with Janet is a rebound relationship. It is supposed to be funny since it has been many years since she died. Instead there is too much truth in it and the movie ends with a feeling that he just hasn’t realized it yet and is instead caught up in the exuberance of finally coming out of a long depression.
If you’re considering this movie with your kids and are concerned about the R rating, there are reasons, but nothing that I think would be universally condemned by parents: Some swearing, a scene of drug use, a scene of underage drinking, and a couple gags involving Thomas Haden Church’s naked butt. But there are some good positive messages as well, so parents will have to figure it out for themselves.
Smart People is a small moderately interesting movie, and one that goes immediately to the upper half of my list for the year (seeing a couple hundred movies) but most people who only see a dozen movies theatrically each year shouldn’t use up one of them on this one. Save it for rental; say around #34 on your Netflix queue.
Smart People is being distributed by Miramax Films
- Wide release on April 11
- Directed by Noam Murro
- Screenplay by Mark Poirier
- Starring: Dennis Quaid, Sarah Jessica Parker, Ellen Page, Thomas Haden Church
- Rated R for language, brief teen drug and alcohol use, and for some sexuality.
- Alex’s Rating: 6 out of 10
