Lack of common sense torpedoes 'Smart People'

By Robert W. Butler

The relationship between two of the main characters is too hard to buy.

Despite quality ingredients, souffl s still fall flat.

That’s what happens to “Smart People,” which aims to be a funny/touching examination of a dysfunctional family seasoned with irony, some big-name actors and a vaguely indy/arthouse sensibility.

It misses.

First-time screenwriter Mark Poirier and first-time director Noam Murro know what they’re after. But the pieces never fit, the characters seem to come from different movies and the film’s driving relationship doesn’t ring true.

Lawrence Wetherhold (Dennis Quaid) teaches Victorian literature at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Or rather he goes through the motions.

Lawrence is a burn-out case, a bearded, pot-bellied grouch who is alternately bored or irritated by his students and who is frustrated by the publishing world’s indifference to his latest manuscript about literary criticism. Plus, he never got over the death of his wife years earlier.

An accident sends Lawrence to the ER where he’s treated by an attractive doc, Janet Hartigan (Sarah Jessica Parker). Lawrence doesn’t remember, but a decade earlier Janet was one of his students. In fact, she had a crush on the prof. Despite her better instincts (and the C he gave her end-of-semester essay) she now gets involved with him.

On the homefront, Lawrence must deal with his daughter Vanessa (Ellen Page), a tart-tongued high school senior who embraces academic excellence and political conservatism but seems never to have experienced much of life. New to the household is Lawrence’s adopted brother Chuck (Thomas Haden Church), an affable slacker looking for a place to crash after the collapse of his latest get-rich-quick scheme.

Everything about this movie seems to be a bit off.

It’s hard to buy into the Lawrence/Janet relationship because (A) Lawrence is such a self-centered grump we can’t believe she’d be attracted and (B) once they’re together they generate absolutely zero romance. Parker seems to be sleepwalking through her role.

Page’s performance feels like a dry run for her Oscar-nominated turn in “Juno” (”Smart People” was filmed earlier but released later). The characters are so interchangeable (here she’s Juno-as-Young Republican) that Page should be banned from playing smart-mouthed young women lest her career run aground on the shoals of typecasting.

Church’s goofball Chuck is the most appealing thing on the screen, especially when he attempts to loosen up his uptight niece by taking Vanessa to a college hangout for beer and relaxation. But the film veers into queasy territory when a tipsy Vanessa makes a pass at Uncle Chuck (they’re not actually blood relations, but still ...).

The screenplay’s stabs at witty dialogue end up sounding forced (again, only Church delivers his lines with anything like conviction) and the film’s emotions are all synthetic. Even the musical score for acoustic guitar, clearly intended to boost the movie’s claim to sensitivity, irritates.