Review: A-list cast offsets ‘Smart People’ flaws

Directed by: Noam Murro

Starring: Dennis Quaid, Sarah Jessica Parker, Ellen Page, Thomas Haden Church, Ashton Holmes

Rated: R

While it may be loosely termed a romantic comedy, there is an air of melancholy permeating every frame of Noam Murro’s big screen directorial debut, “Smart People.”

The main characters are dysfunctional at best, and some of them lean toward clinical depression. The film, however, is not a downer and follows a tried-and-true Hollywood formula wherein a brilliant but troubled protagonist finds spiritual healing and love.

Set against a backdrop of academia and intellectualism and involving a frustrated writer, “Smart People” will bring to mind the recent movies “Wonder Boys” and “The Squid and the Whale.” It’s even set in Pittsburgh at Carnegie Mellon University, where “Wonder Boys” took place.

Murro has made quite a leap from TV commercials for Powerade, Nike and Sears, to a major motion picture with an A-list cast, and what flaws there are in “Smart People” can be placed upon his shoulders. Making great TV spots is no easy task – you’ve got to be engaging and sell a product in 30 or 60 seconds. But movies (this one clocks in at 95 minutes) need well-developed characters, each with a story arc. While Murro and writer Mark Jude Poirier show moments of brilliance and manage some well-written dialogue, this is a film whose whole is somewhat less than the sum of its parts.

Dennis Quaid (channeling Jack Nicholson) plays Lawrence Wetherhold, an English literature professor at Carnegie Mellon. We’ve seen his type before. He’s brilliant, self-absorbed, somewhat misanthropic and struggling with his own demons. In Wetherhold’s case, his demons include the death of his wife, his inability to get his latest book published, a bitter college-age son and a daughter who belongs to the Young Republicans.

Ellen Page, from “Juno,” plays the daughter, Vanessa. She’s a high school senior, also brilliant, studying for the SAT, and she has taken over the role of family matriarch.

Professor Wetherhold has a knack for making his students dislike him. He can’t remember any of their names, even the ones he’s had in several other classes. His contempt for them is readily apparent. His colleagues don’t think much of Lawrence, either, but recognize his talents. Instead of making him the new head of the department, they add insult to injury by appointing him head of the search committee. Vanessa advises him to recommend himself for the job.

To complicate matters, Lawrence’s adopted brother, Chuck, shows up unexpectedly. Chuck, played wryly by Thomas Haden Church, is a classic underachiever. He always needs money and this time needs a place to stay as well.

Lawrence is adamant that Chuck cannot stay at the Wetherhold home, but, as fate would have it, an accident renders the professor unable to drive for several months, and he needs a chauffeur. So Chuck stays. He’s not a dependable chauffeur but injects a bit of fun into young Vanessa’s life – a little too much fun at one point, causing further familiar complications.

While being treated in the emergency room after his accident, Lawrence is cared for by nurse Janet Hartigan (Sarah Jessica Parker). What the (purposefully) absentminded professor doesn’t realize is that Hartigan is one of his former students. She had a bit of a crush on Lawrence at the time, but after he wrote some less-than-flattering comments on one of her papers, she changed her major to medicine. But viewers can see there’s still a spark within her.

On a follow-up visit, another nurse tips Lawrence off, and the professor tells Janet he does indeed remember her.

Following form, Lawrence and Janet begin a casual relationship that slowly but surely builds into an affair. This doesn’t sit well with Vanessa, who has been accepted to Stanford but is afraid to tell her dad. Chuck, affable as he is, is faced with the fact that his niece (but he is an adopted uncle) has a crush on him. He ends up staying with Lawrence’s son, James, in his Carnegie Mellon dorm room a few days a week. It’s a perfect place for a developmentally arrested guy like Chuck.

By the last act, things begin to change. While not everyone’s lives are transformed completely, Lawrence and Janet are deeply affected, and the other characters have set out upon new paths.

A friend once pointed out to me that, as funny as TV’s “Seinfeld” characters are, if she knew them in real life she wouldn’t possibly like any of them (maybe Kramer). The same might be said of the characters here. Outside of Janet (who isn’t perfect), if you really think hard about these people you probably would not want to be around them very often. But they’re interesting to watch onscreen, and each actor embodies his or her role convincingly.

I liked “Smart People.” I’m still pondering it a bit and will watch it again on DVD. On the other hand, I can’t really defend it to someone who might point out its flaws.

Jim Wunderle owns Wunderle Sound Services and is a Springfield freelance writer and musician. He can be reached at info@wunderlesound.com.