Smart People

What is meant by the word smart? Is it purely to do with an individual's IQ? A quantifiable level of intelligence? Or should it encompass a person's entire emotional spectrum - their happiness, their empathy, their ability to love? If this is the case then the titular Smart People have a lot to learn...

Lawrence Wetherhold (Dennis Quaid) is a stereotypically pompous English professor on a slide into self-absorbed pretension; he's superior, conceited and arrogant. Since the death of his wife he's lived in complete denial of anything outside of his intellectual sphere, driving his daughter Vanessa (Ellen Page) into a life of robotic rationality where only perfect SATs, the Young Republicans and the Model UN matter. But an embarrassing concussion leads to a tentative romance with his ER physician (Sarah Jessica Parker) and bonding with his dropout brother, Chuck (Thomas Haden Church), his acting chauffeur cum life coach. Can he reform and be saved from himself?

Smart People immediately resembles Alexander Payne's Sideways and clearly hopes to cash in on its similarities by wooing the same audience. Dennis Quaid - giving his best performance since Far From Heaven - excellently fills the shoes of Paul Giamatti's dysfunctional lead; the self-doubt and loathing are replaced with cast iron intellectual vanity but the roles share the same obstinate inability to act in order to repair their lives. Thomas Haden Church is essentially reprising his role as the embarrassing companion, present to inject light relief and be a mouthpiece of reason, instigating change. Ellen Page is great as a daughter torn between being a protective conservative wife figure for her father - cooking his meals, cleaning his clothes and achieving straight As - and winning the praise of Chuck - smoking weed, going to bars, and actually acting her age. It's not got the wit of her performance in Juno, and it's not a patch on Tracey Flick (Reese Witherspoon's super-achiever in Alexander Payne's Election) but there's more than enough quality dialogue to allow her to easily outshine Sarah Jessica Parker's insipid love interest.

Unfortunately, while the performances are mostly good, other elements are somewhat less enchanting. Several times there are glaring obvious shot-to-shot continuity issues that, while not confusing, grate due to their frequency. The film's soundtrack is at odds with the style of the film - there's a lot of acoustic warbling from teenage emo-rocksters that jars when the majority of the cast is over forty. There are no surprises plotwise either - everything unfolds much as you'd guess after reading a synopsis and cast list; it feels unneccesarily heartwarming - a more ambiguous ending would have been a vast improvement.

While it's not as gripping or darkly comic as films like The Savages, The Squid And The Whale or even Sideways, Smart People is definitely well acted and enjoyable, but aside from keen performances from Quaid and Page there's nothing that really elevates.