{grate 1.5} It’s hard to tell if “Smart People” is one of those
self-deprecating films that pokes fun at depressed intellectuals, or if it’s
actually attempting to seem clever by beating its audience over the head with
lofty witticisms and stilted dialogue. Unfortunately, while it might be going
for the former impressive-without-trying genre (see: “Juno”), “Smart People” is
more like a UCSD student — going overboard, yet still lacking certain depth.
For a flick that relies on compelling protagonists to boost
a scatterbrained plot, its unlikable characters succeed only in driving an
already slow storyline to a 95-minute halt. The script is hinged on flung-about
contrivances that never culminate to any substantial point — we get the whole
shpiel within the first 20 minutes.
A widowed, potbellied professor (Dennis Quaid) who treats
his students (and everyone around him) like shit gets injured, and in his
newfound disabled state he must rely on others to give him rides. This
admittance of helplessness, after years of delusional self-reliance, eventually
forces him to realize that he needs love and happiness just like everyone else
— even dumb people.
His socially impaired
Young Republican daughter Vanessa (Ellen Page) does a fine job mirroring
Quaid’s neuroticism, believing that having a perfect SAT score is better than
having friends. Of course, this changes when the professor’s sloppy adopted
brother, Chuck (
weed, can’t drive and could care less about pretentious academia — but it
doesn’t take long to realize that he is, in fact, the smartest of them all.
Cheap, naked butt shots aside, the thinly veiled lesson here is that life isn’t
just about routine obligations and blue-ribbon prizes.
First-time director Noam Murro spends an unnecessarily long
amount of time elaborating on the inexplicable relationship that flourishes
when Chuck introduces Vanessa to (gasp!) alcohol and (gasp!) fun, and teaches
her the value of taking the stick out of her ass once in a while. But amid all
of this, Vanessa’s father also falls in love — albeit a sad sack’s idea of love
— with former-student-turned-neurosurgeon Janet (Sarah Jessica Parker).
These implausible parallel relationships may have made for
intriguing filmmaking, but somehow they fall short of compelling. This is
mainly because: 1) We ultimately just feel sorry for dead-battery,
witch-wrinkled Sarah Jessica Parker, and 2) There’s too much disrupting subplot
for either romance to develop meaning. Good thing there’s a painfully
indicative soundtrack telling us when to laugh and/or cry (cue the sentimental
acoustic music when something important happens).
Still, there are a few glimmering moments of intelligence in
this try-too-hard film, and the backhanded sass sometimes compensates for
lagging characters. Just don’t call it “smart” — you might inflate its ego.
