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‘Smart People’ not exactly brilliant
BY CARLY McLAIN
STATESMAN STAFF WRITER
ISSUE 78/29
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Being book smart doesn’t mean that you have a lot of street smarts. This is a problem that afflicts Professor Lawrence Wetherhold, played by Denis Quaid, which leads to a dry, witty comedy, with some really good one-liners, but, in general, the movie was rather dull and unexciting.
Lawrence is an extremely intelligent college professor, who has taken his teenage daughter Vanessa, played by Ellen Page, for granted when it comes to the household, but ultimately doesn’t know how to relate her, doesn’t ask or know about his son’s accomplishments, and wants nothing to his adoptive brother Chuck, played by Tomas Haden Church, whom he considers a freeloader and has done nothing with his life. However, when he meets former student Janet, played by Sarah Jessica Parker, in the ER, life as he knows it, changes. Thrown into the dating scene, Witherhold flounders and is forced to learn a life lesson: Sometimes being happy is a personal choice.
With the dry wit that is common in movies, like “The Royal Tenenbaums,” such as “You have the IQ of a dumb ass aunt,” said by Chuck to Wetherhold; “I know I am a miserable ass hole, but I have some hope for myself,” said Witherhold to Janet; or “You’re not happy, and you’re my role model,” said Vanessa to her dad, “Smart People” gives audiences a view into what might be the everyday family with all of its relationship problems and family dynamics.
The overall movie accurately represents the theme that “sometimes the smartest people have the most to learn,” according to the “Smart People” trailer, and that happiness can be a choice, but who you are related to is not.
