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Smart People

Review By: Michael Dance
MichaelDance@TheCinemaSource.com

Smart People is about an uppity jerk of a college professor and his moody, politically conservative daughter. I mentioned the film in my review of Run Fatboy Run by saying that it presents these characters almost like a bet to the audience: by the end of the movie, it challenges us, we'll like them.

My point was that manipulating an audience's sympathies can be tricky. While Run Fatboy Run trusted that we'd like the protagonist just because he was the protagonist, the whole point of Smart People seems to be to find the inner goodness of fundamentally unlikable archetypes. It succeeds.

The actors are just as responsible as the fine-tuned script. Dennis Quaid, even beneath an unkempt beard and a prissy mumble, is charming as the professor, Lawrence Wetherhold. So is Ellen Page as his daughter Vanessa, who's like a mirror image of Page's most famous character: like Juno, she's intelligent but unworldly, but unlike Juno, she uses that intelligence to keep herself at odds with the world.

The plot kicks into gear when two people enter their lives. The first is Chuck (Thomas Haden Church), Lawrence's adopted brother. He shows up to ask for money and ends up staying after Lawrence suffers a minor seizure, gets his license suspended, and needs someone to drive him around. You put Haden Church in a slacker role, and your work is done; he's basically doing a scruffier variation of his Sideways role, but it works, and a less anal presence in the house predictably gets Vanessa to loosen up a bit.

The other person is Janet (Sarah Jessica Parker), a former student of Lawrence's who now works as a nurse and treats him after his seizure. They begin a very tentative romance, but it doesn't feel forced. It's a one step forward, two steps back kind of thing, like when Lawrence takes her out to dinner and talks nonstop about Victorian novels for forty-five minutes.

It's true that this is yet another indie comedy populated by quirky characters – it's no surprise that it came out of Sundance – but for once, it doesn't overdo the quirk, minus a few exceptions (like when Chuck welcomes Janet inside for Christmas dinner). Instead, the characters more or less feel like real people inhabiting a real world. Lawrence also has a son, James (Ashton Holmes of A History of Violence), who goes to the same college, although he's the most underdeveloped character, appearing