Smarts, hearts duel in tepid 'Smart People'
It turns out in Noam Murro's domestic dramedy "Smart People" that super-intelligent families might be just as emotionally screwed up and dysfunctional as the rest of us.
Maybe less interesting, too.
Noah Bambach's superior genre entry, 2005's "The Squid and the Whale," investigated this subject with cutting dark comedy and heart-rending empathy for its characters, totally lost despite their MENSA-level intellects.
In "Smart People," written by novelist Mark Jude Poirier, Murro examines a college lit professor's fragmented family with what can be charitably called a mild curiosity and a subdued sense of humor.
More Coverage Video Dann Gire on 'Smart People'
Professor Lawrence Wetherhold (Dennis Quaid) teaches lit at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University. A rude and self-absorbed academic, Wetherhold never remembers students' names. He avoids his pupils, preferring to spend time dealing with rejections from publishers uninterested in his new literary manuscript.
Wetherhold's wife has died, leaving him with a college-aged son, James (Ashton Holmes in a woefully under-developed role), and a hyper control-freak high-schooler named Vanessa ("Juno" star Ellen Page).
James hardly has any contact with Dad. Vanessa has become his surrogate housekeeper, a withdrawn, intensely intelligent Young Republicans enthusiast whose caustic comments have rendered her all but friendless.
"You're not happy!" Dad notes in a rare moment of insight.
"You're not happy, and you're my role model!" Vanessa protests.
Things get shaken up by the sudden arrival of the prof's black-sheep adopted brother Chuck ("Sideways" costar Thomas Haden Church), an aimless, penniless free soul who wants to crash at his bro's house for a while.
Wetherhold wants Chuck to leave, but when the prof injures himself in a fall, his doctor -- another one of his forgotten former students -- Janet Hartigan ("Sex and the City" star Sarah Jessica Parker) says he can't legally drive for six months.
So Chuck gets to be his brother's chauffeur, forcing the estranged men to interact.
With Church, Parker and Page expertly performing variations on recent characters we've seen, Quaid gives us the movie's most interesting figure, a displeasing, grumpy, intellectual bully who holds on to our empathy by his thespian fingernails.
His neurotic professor prefers to ride behind his driver, not beside, and grouses when a publisher wants to print his manuscript "You Can't Read!" with changes that amount to "a travesty of scholarship."
Murro, making his directorial feature debut, avoids clubbing his audience with cliches, at least when it comes to dumb-but-emotionally content Chuck inexplicably turning his smart-but-disgruntled family members into nice, self-fulfilled people.
"Smart People" is a tepid family affair, captured in flat, unappetizing visuals that have been color-bled just enough for them to look anemic.
Murro tops these off with relentless soft-pop songs that constantly ply our ears with cloying emotions, apparently compensating for the menagerie of characters who don't lend themselves to instant empathy.
Near the end, an older, wiser Wetherhold breaks from his neurotic practices and climbs into the front seat next to Chuck, who instantly comments on how his brother climbed into the front seat next to him.
Why?
You'd think a movie called "Smart People" would give its audience credit for being smart enough to notice this small, symbolic act without having it underscored, italicized and punctuated.
"Smart People"
2#189; stars out of four
Starring: Dennis Quaid, Ellen Page, Thomas Haden Church, Sarah Jessica Parker
Directed by: Noam Murro
Other: A Miramax Films release; rated R (drug use, language, sexual situations); 93 minutes