Movie Notes: Smart People
= 2 stars
Starring Dennis Quaid, Sarah Jessica Parker, Ellen Page
Directed by Noam Murro
Synopsis
English professor Lawrence (Dennis Quaid) may be intellectually brilliant, but he’s sadly incompetent in essentially everything else. His sarcastic daughter Vanessa (Ellen Page) and layabout brother Chuck (Thomas Haden Chuch) are no help either. His former student Janet (Sarah Jessica Parker) may cut through the pretension.
The Good
- Dennis Quaid is tops as a grumpy, irascible English professor who resists sharing his knowledge with students in order to maintain his intellectual superiority. Meanwhile, he’s deeply unhappy in his love life and frustrated by the task of getting a manuscript published.
- Ellen Page is decent as Quaid’s overachieving daughter, but there aren’t any surprises in her performance — she simply acts precocious and emotionally guarded. No Juno here.
- Some sage observation in the depiction of a group of people so “smart” they’d rather be unhappy than compromise their intellectual world views. They insist their loneliness is because nobody has proved good enough for them.
The Bad
- Despite a solid start, Smart People ultimately fails by not having these ornery characters get a solid comeuppance. As a result, the relatively “happy” ending feels abrupt and a rather tacked on.
Conclusion
Intellectual snobbery can be quite funny — take Squid And The Whale where the elitist characters actually go through some real hell as their hypocrisies are ruthlessly exposed. Smart People is oddly dumb for treating its characters with undue respect. Ultimately, Smart People was an okay rental, but I definitely felt “un-smart” spending the money to rent it.
IMDB: Smart People
Wikipedia: Smart People
Rotten Tomatoes: Smart People 49%