Smart People
“Smart People” is one smart movie. It’s smart about how it shows the paralysis of intelligence and arrogance on genuinely good people at heart. It’s smart about how it shows awkward situations unfold and how the truth sets them free, even among loved ones. It’s smart about how characters grow- or don’t grow- depending on their time-table, not another persons. And finally, it’s smart about its’ casting- everyone in the film is a smart cookie, and they bring that intelligence to their characters with note-perfect accuracy. The people in Mark Jude Poirier’s acute screenplay may seem like stereotypes, but think hard and you’ll probably recognize some of them in your own life.
Dennis Quaid stars as Lawrence Weatherhold, an English professor at Carnegie-Mellon University who’s too smart for his own good. His smugness is seen as a virtue only to himself- his students resent him, his fellow faculty members avoid speaking to him, and the book he’s looking to publish- entitled “You Can’t Read”- oozes that arrogance out of every page, causing rejection by every publisher until one decides it can be a great controversy magnet, forgetting the content in it. His home life isn’t that great, either, not helped any by the specter of his wife’s death years earlier. His son (Ashton Holmes) is neglected by him, even though he’s an aspiring poet. His daughter Vanessa (Ellen Page) is a feisty Young Republican who’s inherited her father’s drive towards Academic success, even if it means not having a lot of fun in the process. His adopted brother (Thomas Hayden Church) marches to his own drummer in comparison, without fear of being considered a loser as he drifts from job-to-job and sleeps in, without much drive in his life. All four need to learn a few things about getting along with each other more when Lawrence injures himself and is forced to be driven all over by his brother and others. But opportunity finds him when a beautiful nurse (Sarah Jessica Parker) catches his attention- not just because she was a former student- and the two start dating.
More than anything else, this comedy-drama, in the Alexander Payne-Wes Anderson mold, is about daring to change. More importantly, it’s about recognizing the need to. It’s not an easy thing for some people, especially when you look at yourself as better than others, or more importantly, when you PROJECT that image, even if you don’t feel that way. Not all of the characters in this movie- directed with sharp intelligence and wit by Noam Murro- need to change mind you; Lawrence and Vanessa are the ones most hampered in by themselves. The rest provide the catalyst for change, with the brother (played by Church, who keeps getting better with roles like this, “Sideways,” and “Spider-Man 3”) and the nurse (played by Parker in a feeling, frustrated performance that resonates with both the audience and Lawrence) playing the biggest roles in that department.
As the film’s quintessential “smart people” of the title, Quaid and Page bring their A-games. Quaid has always been an underrated actor in his ability to get into his characters, from “The Rookie” to “In Good Company” to “Far From Heaven” to “Traffic” and “Frequency,” probably because he’s also been saddled with movies below his talent as well (“The Day After Tomorrow,” “Jaws 3-D” anyone?). Here, he’s terrific at showing the insecurities behind the confidence of this brilliant professor, the pain behind the pleasure when he’s out with Parker, and the inability to connect with others that is the curse of most brilliant minds. But one look in his eyes, and you can feel that he wants to change thing. For Page’s Vanessa, it’s more complicated than that. As played by Page, Vanessa seems cut from the same cloth as her Juno in independent thinking and street smart wit until you see the by-play between her and Church’s character, and see just how hampered in by conformity she really is. Don’t get me wrong, for a Young Republican in today’s society, Vanessa is quite the rebel, but it’s not until her uncle comes into town that she really starts to see that she can be so much more than she is right now. She’s a glimpse at a younger generation pressured into success by standards too impossibly high to meet sometimes, too determined to fit the mold that they’ve forgotten to be rebellious. In the end, you start to see a glimpse of that rebellion in not just her but her father, but not because they’re pushing against society’s standards, but because they’re finally figuring out how to find their place in them. The future looks bright for them; the movie telling their story is kind of bright to, in how it tells it.
