Smart People
By MovieCritic on 04-22-2008
Smart People overreaches in its ambitious attempt to make comedy out of ennui. What seems meant to be "smart", "dark" humor often comes across as unsettling rather than funny with writing that misses the mark and strange acting choices that may leave Artisans bored, Guardians a bit disturbed, Idealists disappointed, and Rationals possibly a bit offended at the portrayal of people of their temperament.
Widower Lawrence Wetherhold (Dennis Quaid) is a disenchanted professor whose lack of interest in his students leads to a spiral of professional despair. The students mirror his contempt for them with bad evaluations and general disrespect. When his briefcase gets trapped overnight in his car a locked campus parking lot, a former student working the gate refuses to bend the rules let him it. He tries to climb a fence, falls, and has a seizure after hitting his head. As a result, he can't drive for six months. He is left at the mercy of his adopted brother, Chuck (Thomas Haden Church), a middle-aged slacker who moves into his house and serves as his driver, and his daughter Vanessa (Ellen Page), whose sole preoccupation is her academic future. (Son James, played by Ashton Holmes, appears occasionally when a plot point needs him but serves no purpose in the story.) The neurologist who performs a follow-up exam lets slip that ER doctor Janet Hartigan (Sarah Jessica Parker) was once Larry's student and had a co-ed crush on him. In a plot device that's often repeated in the films of the early '00s but very improbable in life, the pair dates and eventually fall in love. Some plot missteps: uncle gets stoned with his lonely, (adopted), under aged niece, then takes her out to a bar where gets drunk and makes a pass at him. The out-of-practice widower fails to use a condom properly and gets his new girlfriend, the doctor, pregnant. Acting missteps: Sarah Jessica Parker plays this one too much like Carrie Bradshaw. The waif-like facial expressions and body postures that fit in a sex/humor columnist do not work in the head of ER in a major city hospital. There are times when her performance in one scene seem to "foreshadow" events that happen later in the story. Ellen Page brings snarky and sarcastic to a level that becomes irritating and annoying. Vanessa lacks Juno's charm and doesn't come across as either of the typical high-achieving students types, the "nerd" or the "valedictorian bound for success."
Verdict: Wait for DVD if you bother with this one at all.
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Posted by bsaunders on May 1, 2008
Perhaps mine is an introvert read. I didn't see any realism in the depiction of the professor or the daughter. The daughter, in particular, didn't ring true. It seemed like an insulting stereotype of people who more outgoing people label "smart" and mock for it. The father's complicated grief and the daughter's unpopular personal style were linked with their intellectualism, as if the bookishness itself led them to be "snot noses" and, by implication, that no normal person in their right mind would be so interested in esoteric matters. |
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Posted by JackDermody on May 3, 2008
I don't think we're far apart from each other on this movie Don't you believe the director/writer fully intended to equate the emptiness of greed for knowledge as parallel to the emptiness of material wealth -- and succeeded? A former girlfriend - a Guardian - insisted I was snotty about my education and that my entire family looked down on her for not yet having completed college. I had NO IDEA at the time she was feeling this way because I really did not harbor a single negative thought about her schooling. My point is that we can all end up living in hell despite our best efforts and what we think are excellent choices. The smart people in "Smart People" with all of their data and insights lived in as dysfunctional a world as any ever filmed. A great post-viewing conversation could begin like this: What is education really for? What the hell is a "good education"? How can the literature professor meet the bricklayer at school and create genius together? Who is smart...really? Shouldn't the characters in the sequel to this movie (yeah right) be required to spend a year in West Africa where water has to be carried from the river, where everybody sings and dances, and if you don't grow it or kill it, you don't eat it? |
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Posted by Jaidys on May 4, 2008
Well those criticisms are great and all... but could we get some movies where being "smart" isn't either illegal, empty, insane, or greedy? Most college professors are just so... normal. This seems like a caricature. |
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Posted by bsaunders on May 10, 2008
I wasn't convinced that the prof and his daughter were "greedy for knowledge." True, one of the ways the prof acted out his insecurities was to be nasty to his students, but that's a separate issue from his interest in intellectual matters. Bricklayers can be just as snobby about "college people" as the reverse, and this movie seemed an example of that -- the "artsy" kid's revenge against the "nerdy" kids ...or something. Caricatures by people who don't know many professors. I agree with Jaidys: the college professors I know are mostly down-to-earth people. Kids like the daughter -- with all that competitiveness about grades -- don't usually grow up to be academics, in my experience. They go on to much higher-status, higher-paying lives! |
Well, my dear Movie Critic, I attended this movie with my Idealist son and Rational nephew. We did enjoy this movie altho it was flawed. Ellen Page had the best role and lines - a Rational version of Juno but with few happy ties to fellow humans. Church reprised his role in Sideways -- what he'd be like if he continued on the same path. I loved the theme: "Okay, so you know everything, but what about the rest of your life?" I liked the realism of the destiny of snot noses who wallow in the empty superiority of esoteric knowledge. But who in the world would want to emulate these people? (Can't think of one.) What woman would actually be attracted to Quaid's role? (Haven't met one.) At the very least, most movie goers probably left glad for their own lives and eager to clean up areas that could lead to family dysfunction like the movie's.