'Smart People' proves intelligence isn't everything
By Michelle Davey, Staff Writer
April 21, 2008 | 3 p.m.
Lawrence Wetherhold (Dennis Quaid) is the typical grumpy, middle-aged professor who does not bother to learn his students’ names and ends up with a few choice words on his end of the year evaluations (you know the type). He limps around the Carnegie Mellon University campus in the same way he limps about his life– miserably.
Self-absorption is an art form for Lawrence, which he proves throughout the film as he consistently thinks about himself first and his loved ones and relatives second. Lawrence, a widower and father of two, has been unable to move past his wife’s death, though it has been many years since her passing.
His son, James (Ashton Holmes), is a Carnegie Mellon student who seems to have the same regard for his father that many of his fellow students have. He lives in a dorm on campus and submits his poetry to The New Yorker without telling his father, a literature professor.
His daughter Vanessa (Ellen Page) is a senior in high school who views her father as a role model. She is attempting to get a perfect SAT score and has taken on cooking and cleaning duties since her mother’s death. Page brings the same witty teenage vibe that she brought in “Juno” but with a pompous, Young Republican attitude.
Things just are not going well for Lawrence lately. He hoped to be named head of the English department but, instead, has been made chair of the search committee. No one will publish his book, his mooching, adopted brother Chuck (Thomas Haden Church) has just shown up to ask for money and to top everything off, his car has just been towed. After an argument with a former student who works at the impound lot, Lawrence climbs over the fence to retrieve his briefcase from his car and, while climbing back over, takes a nasty fall that causes him to have a mild seizure.
Enter Dr. Janet Hartigan (Sarah Jessica Parker), a physician in the E.R. who took one of Lawrence’s classes during her freshman year of college. She had a bit of a schoolgirl crush on the attractive and mysteriously brooding professor, but he does not remember her (of course) and insults her bad grammar moments after waking up in the hospital. She informs him that his seizure makes him legally prohibited from driving a car for six months.
When Lawrence arrives home, Chuck is sitting on his couch ready to greet him. Vanessa hired him to chauffeur Lawrence around while his license is suspended because the insurance will not cover a driver. Lawrence vehemently declines the offer, but Chuck ends up staying anyway, and the audience should be truly thankful for that. Church manages to steal every scene he is in, providing a needed comic relief from his windbag relatives.
The plot takes a fairly predictable turn from here. Lawrence flirts with the doctor, Chuck attempts to fit in with his family and Vanessa learns a life lesson– sort of.
Quaid plays the pompous, unlikable Lawrence well, even adopting a very affected I’m-better-than-you voice when he is talking down to the less intelligent. He and the rest of the film’s “smart” cast are living the miserable existence of a successful life that turns out to be boring– an atmosphere that is captured perfectly by the motionless camera and drab browns and yellows that drape the scenery.
None of the characters can seem to use their overdeveloped brains to catch a clue about getting a life or falling in love. Vanessa has no friends at school, and instead of making any, she studies constantly and translates Christmas dinner recipes from Old French. Lawrence cannot get past himself long enough to ask Janet where she is from on their first date. Even Janet, a smarty-pants doctor, cannot seem to make up her mind about committing to a relationship.
Chuck seems to be the only one having any fun around the Wetherhold house, but his voice of reason does not seem to actually be heard by anyone, which might be because he is just not “smart” enough. After all, Lawrence thinks of him as “a giant toddler.”
The characters begrudgingly change in the end– but only by mere inches. “I haven’t had any grand epiphany or made any sweeping changes in my personality,” Lawrence admits to Janet as they struggle to define whatever it is they are to each other.
But it’s okay, Janet replies, “We can figure this out, we’re smart people.”
Well, maybe.
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“Smart People”
Speakeasy Rating: B-
Running Time: 95 minutes
MPAA Rating: R for language, teen drug and alcohol use and some sexuality