Smart People really should have been called “Arrogant and Socially Inept People”—all of the characters have chips on their shoulders proportionate to the sizes of their IQs. Characters in a film like this one should fall into one of two types: either delightfully dysfunctional (see: Little Miss Sunshine) or delightfully malicious (see: The Squid and the Whale). The problem with Smart People is that writer Mark Poirier (COL ’91) can’t seem to decide which type he wants his characters to be, so their constantly bizzare behavior comes off as disingenuous. And because its characters are at the heart of the film, Smart People falls flat.
The movie’s protagonist is Lawrence Wetherhold (Dennis Quaid), a tenured Victorian literature professor at Carnegie Mellon who is struggling to get his book published and become the head of the English department. Since his wife passed away, his overachieving daughter Vanessa (Ellen Page) has inherited the role of housewife—everything from cooking Christmas dinner to nagging everyone around her—as well as her father’s pretentiousness and disregard for others. Both Lawrence and Vanessa end up outside their highly regimented comfort zones when Janet Hartigan (Sarah Jessica Parker), Lawrence’s former student and current ER doctor, and Chuck Wetherhold (Thomas Haden Church), Lawrence’s adopted and freeloading brother, enter their lives.
Parker’s performance is completely disconnected from the film. The audience has no idea why she’s so interested in Quaid’s character, unless she harbors a secret passion for Bleak House and beards. She’s consantly awkward or angry around him, and their lack of chemistry is apparent in their first oh-so-cringeworthy kiss.
Thomas Haden Church, on the other hand, is a delight, constructing the most likeable character on the screen by far. He manages to give his character depth even with the most cookie-cutter sitcom lines, and his comedic timing and perfect deadpan make him the funniest in the film.
Poirier deserves credit for the keen sense of irony that pervades Smart People’s laugh-out-loud moments. At the start of the film, both Quaid and Page give stinging verbal lashings to everyone around them; Page’s banter is reminiscent of Juno, only this time the clever catchphrases and pop culture references are replaced with biting quips.
Unfortunately, Smart People lags dramatically in the second half when Lawrence and Vanessa’s veneers of arrogance begin to crack. While the breakdown or evolution of a character is supposed to be the most interesting part of the film, these epiphanies are insignificant and insincere.
Smart People ends up almost exactly where it started, with the characters remaining their disingenuous selves. Perhaps Poirier is trying to comment on how difficult it is to change how we act, or is just trying to get back at an old Georgetown professor (Smart People was initially set to take place on campus). Either way, there is a multitude of films with similar objectives but more compelling executions that are worth much more of your time.
