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Review: Smart People

by Jane Boursaw on April 13th, 2008

After the success of Juno, I can imagine it would be tough for Ellen Page to keep raising the bar higher and higher. I mean, what do you do after Juno? That movie was so much HER, you just felt like she must be playing an extension of herself. I think that’s partly why Smart People seems like Juno Lite.

The ensemble cast features Page as Vanessa Wetherhold, a Type-A high school student, intent on scoring high on her SATs so she can get into Stanford University and, undoubtedly, away from her kooky family. Dennis Quaid plays her gruff dad, Lawrence, a self-absorbed English professor at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University. He’s still grieving the loss of his wife a few years earlier and can’t bear to give her clothes to Goodwill, even though, as Vanessa reminds him…

…it would be a great tax write-off.

Lawrence’s college-student son, James (Ashton Holmes), is living in the Carnegie Mellon dorm. When Lawrence visits him one night to complain about a high credit card charge, his ratty old car gets towed, and he can’t talk the security person (a former student whose name he can’t remember) into letting him retrieve his briefcase from the car. So Lawrence climbs the fence and ends up in the hospital with a seizure-induced trauma and concussion.

Can’t drive for six months, claims Lawrence’s E.R. doctor, Janet (Sarah Jessica Parker), with whom he strikes up a romance of sorts. But lo and behold, when Lawrence gets home, his adopted brother, Chuck (Thomas Haden Church), is on hand to be his chauffeur. Chuck’s not exactly a pillar of responsibility. He leaves Chuck standing in the rain, gets Vanessa drunk and has to fend off her awkward sexual advances, and steals a beloved sweatshirt of Lawrence’s dead wife.

The message I get from this rambling movie is that we’re all kooky in our own way, and we all grieve and get by in our own way. But sometimes the slackers actually have it more together than the “smart” people. At one point, Chuck declares giddily, “I’m happy with my life!” And it makes you think that maybe the slackers have it right. They never worry about getting ahead, making more money, being at the top of their game. You know, maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Not caring certainly simplifies things.

But back to my Juno Lite thought: Like Juno, this movie is about a dysfunctional family (and there’s even a pregnancy), but it doesn’t have the same verve as Juno. The actors are great, and the script by Mark Jude Poirier is pretty good, but I didn’t really care about any of the characters. The whole movie just sort of lies there, leaving you wanting something…more…

The bright spot for me is Thomas Haden Church, who has this devil-may-care attitude that brightens up a dismal household. He seems like he’d be a fun guy to hang around with. Have a beer or whatever.

Images: Smart People, Miramax Films, 2008

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