The trailers for the movie Smart People, from director Noam Murro, shrewdly play up the producer connection between this movie and the well-written, finely paced Sideways. The draw here for fans of Sideways is Thomas Haden Church, who won an Oscar nomination for his turn as the fianceé looking for a last fling. For anyone younger, it's Juno star Ellen Page. Others might want to see Sex and The City's Sarah Jessica Parker. As for Dennis Quaid, he's usually a safe bet for a good performance.
But the comparison is a ruse. There's nothing remotely to be compared to Sideways. The plot is derivative, the dialog and pacing plod, and the characterizations have no surprises. Ellen Page does a second turn as a wise-ass teenage daughter named Vanessa. Full of wordy ripostes, Page is skating in the same character only this time it's conservative and not pregnant. While Quaid turns in a respectable performance, as do Haden Church and Parker, there are no great revelations in character development. This is what's so disappointing. Throughout, one can't help but make comparisons to better romps through academia such as Wonder Boys and Educating Rita.
Quaid plays widowed professor Lawrence Wetherhold. And here is where the predictability begins. Of course, it's winter, and his wife is dead, the only evidence of her being around is a note found in a pile of papers, her old clothes, and most notably, a Wellesley sweatshirt. His son and daughter barely speak, his love life is non-existent, and so far many publishers have turned down his dull and pompous manuscript proposal. His ne'er do well adopted brother Chuck shows up. There's a small medical crisis and the brother is asked to stick around as a driver. The professor falls into the path of a former student. She hates him. They go out on a date. It fails. Still, they fall in love.
The first unfortunate choice made by screenwriter Mark Poirier was to have the slacker brother be "adopted" as if this were a convenient excuse for the differences between Lawrence and Chuck. This is a mistake, for a such differences are normal within families. A common gene pool with dissimilar habits and perspectives makes for more tension and comedy than using adoption as a feeble reason for the disparity between the two siblings.
Article comments