Smart People

SMART PEOPLE

Starring: Dennis Quaid, Thomas Hayden Church, Ellen Page, Sarah Jessica Parker
Directed By: Noam Murro
Written By: Mark Poirer

Smart People stars Dennis Quaid as Laurence Wetherhold, a tenured professor at Carnegie Mellon, a prestigious university in Pennsylvania. He has two children, the poetry writing, misunderstood James, (Ashton Holmes) and Vanessa, (Ellen Page) his 17 year old extremely intelligent and emotionally stunted daughter. Given her father’s behaviour, her high levels of intelligence, her father’s expectations of her, and the fact that her mother died an unspecified number of years ago, her emotional ineptitude is perhaps unsurprising.

Thomas Hayden Church plays Chuck, Laurence’s adopted brother, a point Laurence makes sure to stress every time the relationship is mentioned. Chuck comes into the family because Laurence had an accident and cannot drive due to a trauma related seizure and Vanessa is too busy getting the perfect score on her S.A.T.’s to ‘be his chauffeur for six months’.

Chuck is the antithesis of Laurence and promotes everything Laurence is against.He moves from job to job, and borrows money from Laurence every time he sees him. He gets Vanessa stoned and takes her drinking, in an attempt to humanize her, to show her that there’s more to life then being ‘smart’. Unfortunately Chuck’s attempts to be friends with his niece, lead her to believe he is interested in her romantically and she almost ruins the budding friendship by making a move on him.

This is a character driven story and details the realisation that Laurence has regarding his own character and shortcomings and how it has affected his family and his relationships with people, within the family, as well as his colleagues and students, who dislike him to a person. While he has no ‘epiphany’ as he tells girlfriend Janet, (Sarah Jessica Parker), he does attempt to make amends to his behaviour and tries to become a better person.
Janet is a former student of his, who was put off studying English as a result of his teaching methods, and switched to Biology instead, leading her to become head of the ER and the person who treats Laurence on his initial entry to hospital. She then proceeds to date him, despite the best efforts of Vanessa to destroy the relationship. Although Laurence is quite capable of destroying it by himself, and almost does when Janet realises he is not prepared to make any changes to himself, and is just taking her for granted.
Smart People is sharp and funny, well written and well cast. Ellen Page is in danger of becoming type-cast as the intellectual sarcastic teenager, but it is a role she plays to perfection. Thomas Hayden Church is excellent as the ne’er do well, black sheep brother bringing plenty of light relief to the film, and most of the laughs.
Dennis Quaid plays the jaded, pompous, arrogant Laurence, who realises the error of his ways, almost too late, with conviction. He also realises that he can’t change everything all at once and makes a slow but steady journey back to being a functioning human being. Smart People is slow in places but a worthwhile watch.