'Smart People' comes up a little short

Despite their sharp tongues, these 'Smart People' are mostly dull

By Michael Sragow | Sun Movie Critic

April 11, 2008

(B-) A third of the way through Smart People, I channeled Randy Newman's "Short People" and thought, "Smart people got no reason to live." In this sometimes droll but often just pleasantly literate movie, screenwriter Mark Jude Poirier's smart people -- depressed English prof Lawrence Wetherhold ( Dennis Quaid) and his go-getter daughter Vanessa (Ellen Page) -- walk around Pittsburgh and the campus of Carnegie-Mellon "tellin' great big lies" like Newman's short ones, albeit mostly to themselves.

Wetherhold has become a dull and morose intellectual egotist since his wife died. It takes several tries for a fetching physician ( Sarah Jessica Parker) to shake him out of his funk. And his daughter has assumed her father's anhedonia as well as her mom's responsibilities. Juno's Page wins laughs as Vanessa with her brilliant, snarky YouTube timing, but the role is an impossible blend of precocity and stunted growth. Vanessa doesn't own up to her own needs even after she drunkenly throws herself at Wetherhold's adopted brother, an exuberant ne'er-do-well named Chuck (Thomas Haden Church).

The satiric point of Poirier and the film's director, Noam Murro, is that smart people aren't "just the same as you and I" but they aren't all that different either; the movie ends with joyous baby pictures snapped in the bosom of the Wetherhold family. But even when Smart People has rhythm, it doesn't have any lilt. It evokes no applause, just a shrug. To be fair, it's refreshing to see a movie so saturnine that a couple's "meet-cute" takes place in an emergency room: Wetherhold bops his noggin falling off a fence into a lot where campus authorities have hauled his improperly parked car; an ex-student, Janet Hartigan (that's Parker), is the E.R. doctor who takes care of him. She still holds a crush for his over-educated hide, though he gave her a "C" on her Middlemarch essay.

After his knock on the head -- and Hartigan's jolt to his heart -- the absent-minded professor slowly comes to life, sans Flubber. Wetherhold can't drive for six months, so Chuck signs on as his chauffeur. Under the influence of Hartigan, Chuck and James Wetherhold (Ashton Holmes), Lawrence's heretofore neglected poet-son, this academic ventures out into the world and considers his possibilities.

The best part of his not-so-fantastic voyage are the details, which are often sharp and funny. Wetherhold's unpublished manuscript, The Price of Postmodernism: Epistomology, Hermeneutics and the Literary Canon, suddenly attracts attention when Vanessa suggests You Can't Read as a new title. (A hard-nosed publisher sees that with ruthless editing this combative screed could put Wetherhold on PBS with Charlie Rose.)

Woody Allen made a career from creating comedy out of the failure of hyper-verbal people to express their love. But Wetherhold and Hartigan clam up at crucial points without amusing complications -- their inability to open up their hearts and minds is the complication -- and Parker and Quaid are no romantic dream team. Like many a once-boyish star whose age provides a new bag of tricks, Quaid does most of his acting with his weathered handsomeness. Parker comes off even more self-absorbed than he does.

Church provides some undiluted joy as Chuck. He stays true to his uninhibited character though he knows the clock is ticking away on his free spirit. This actor boasts the rare ability to suggest that an intuitive man's killer instincts can pierce through his confusion.

Vanessa and Chuck never really thrash out what they mean to each other. The moviemakers are too busy doting on her preppie good looks and treating her Young Republicanism as if it were inherently hilarious. What promises to be a fresh, original movie turns into a cross between Wonder Boys and Family Ties.

But at least this film liberates its smart people from what Newman might have called their "grubby little minds" and gives them some reason to live.

>>>Smart People (Miramax) Starring Dennis Quaid, Sarah Jessica Parker, Thomas Haden Church, Ellen Page. Directed by Noam Murro. Rated R for language, brief drug use and some sexuality. Time 93 minutes.

michael.sragow@baltsun.com