Smart People

I'm not sure it was the wisest decision to call this film Smart People. It doesn't give smart people a very good name, will repel those who don't like people who think they're smart, and may make actual smart people self-conscious about going to a film called Smart People, like going to a Mensa meeting. The film isn't all that smart--it uses a lot of big words (I can't recall another film that uses the word "rubric" without stopping to define it) and includes snippets of poetry by Tennyson and Matthew Arnold, but isn't particularly eggheadish about relationships, which is the heart of the story. In fact, it seems to say that people can be too smart for their own good, by having the least-educated character the most well-adjusted and common sensical person in the film.

The film, written by Mark Poirier and directed by Noam Murro, concerns a college professor played by Dennis Quaid. Long mourning a dead wife, he's basically an asshole, in fact the writer seems to have used a thesaurus to come up with terms to describe him: pompous windbag, miserable asshole, douchebag. The character is something of a chimera, stitched together from other difficult intellectuals like Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets, Jeff Daniels in The Squid and the Whale, and Michael Douglas in Wonder Boys. In fact, the film is set in Pittsburgh, just like Wonder Boys, with the same bleak and gray weather.

Quaid has a son in college who barely tolerates him, and a teenage daughter who takes care of him. She is played by Juno's Ellen Page, in another brainy teen role, though this time Page is a witty conservative in the manner of Michael J. Fox's Alex P. Keaton, even to the point of favoring sweater vests. Her character, Vanessa, brings to mind the expression that she could swallow a piece of coal and shit a diamond. This dysfunctional household is then joined by Quaid's adopted brother, played by Thomas Haden Church, who is a slacker and free spirit. The "adopted" part is stressed, because otherwise a quasi-incestuous attraction between him and Page would lose the quasi and increase its creepiness factor a thousand-fold.

After a head injury Quaid meets a doctor, Sarah Jessica Parker, who is a former student, though he doesn't remember her (it's repeatedly mentioned that Quaid is so self-absorbed he doesn't recognize any of his students). They have a halting romance that unfolds in somewhat predictable romantic-comedy fashion, but manages to be a bit more interesting because of the college-level dialogue and the polish the perfomers give it. Quaid, though he is as unkempt as a hobo, uses an odd manner of speech that I fear is what some English professors do actually sound like, and Parker, though the role is largely thankless, invests more than just the "long-suffering girlfriend" to her role.

It's Church who steals the show, though. If I can use a sports metaphor (and who will stop me?) he's like a super-sub who is sent off the bench by the coach with a smack on the behind and a "go get 'em" when the chips are down and the film needs a boost. Of course his character is a cliche, the uneducated but wise person who knows his heart more than the eggheads he's surrounded by. But the decision to have Page's character attracted to him is wrong, wrong, wrong, not only because it's creepy but it just doesn't ring true that an overachieving girl who has her heart set on a perfect SAT score would fall for a middle-aged freeloader who happens to be her uncle, even if he is adopted.

Mostly I liked his movie for its shambling style and winning dialogue, but at times I wondered if the director was actually paying attention, because the pacing is off and a lot of scenes last a beat too long. It relies a little too much on the conventions of the genre (I'm dubious that a man of Quaid's age can change like he does here) and as with As Good As It Gets, the attraction the female lead has for her difficult leading man is hard to understand, but I left the theater satisfied, if not any smarter.