"Smart" casting for slightly smug comedy

Director Noam Murro (L) and actors (L-R) Dennis Quaid, Sarah Jessica Parker and Thomas Haden Church arrive for the premiere of the film ''Smart People'' during the 2008 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah January 20, 2008.

Smart People

By Kirk Honeycutt

PARK CITY, Utah (Hollywood Reporter) - With a title like "Smart People," a film placed in academia signals that its characters might be too clever for their own good.

Too much knowledge can leave people incapable of coping with life and disconnected from family and friends. Come to think of it, what friends?

Thus, the two debuting filmmakers -- novelist Mark Jude Poirier and commercials director Noam Murro -- locate their comic mischief in the core of family life.

The savvy casting of Dennis Quaid, Sarah Jessica Parker, Thomas Haden Church and "Juno's" hot young star Ellen Page in seemingly tailor-made roles gives Miramax plenty of marketing hooks for its April 11 release.

Reminiscent of the recent Sundance hit "The Squid and the Whale" in its depiction of a burned-out academic and off-campus family disruptions, "Smart People" should attract similar adult audiences, with the caveat that the smugness of some characters might be an initial turnoff.

For students at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, Professor Lawrence Wetherhold (Quaid) is a horror show: An acerbic widower who has lost interest in even his own specialty, Victorian literature, he is self-absorbed, demanding, arrogant, contemptuous of his students and grouchy as hell. He doesn't warm up one bit at home; nevertheless, he is a role model for his young daughter Vanessa (Page), who already is as friendless and conceited as dad. She is even a Young Republican. Older brother James (Ashton Holmes) lives in a dorm, presumably to escape the poisonous atmosphere at home and to keep his many secrets.

Into these lives come two "corrupters," characters who will undermine the pomposity of father and daughter and lure them back to something resembling normalcy. A head trauma, the result of his own pig-headedness, sends the professor to the ER where his doctor, Janet (Parker), is a former student who once had a crush on him. Naturally, he fails to remember her. Crashing the Wetherhold household without an invitation is Lawrence's financially challenged brother Chuck (Church), a permanent adolescent whom Lawrence is careful to always refer to as his "adopted" brother.

The chief disappointment in Poirier's screenplay is that the effects these two will have on the family largely are predictable, with the writer never finding a way to trip up audience expectations. There's a hint of this in Vanessa's misreading of her uncle's seduction of her, but mostly the dramatic course is too steady and true for surprises.

What exactly motivates Janet to rescue Lawrence from his self-destruction? She might have had a schoolgirl crush once, but she's a physician now, surely with more life experiences, and all the professor ever gave her was a C and a rude remark.

One would like to see what she sees in him, but Quaid doesn't make that easy. He's not a warm and fuzzy burnout like Michael Douglas' character in "The Wonder Boys." That chip on his shoulder has given Lawrence a permanent slouch, and the caustic manner feels like less like a facade than his real personality. Clearly, though, something died within him when his wife passed. He even still hangs on to her wardrobe.

You do see why Uncle Chuck would take on the Vanessa reclamation project. She's too young to be so old. He wants to instill in her a rebellious streak and outlaw spirit before it's too late. Theirs is the more interesting relationship, which could have stood more development; it needed to go beyond smoking weed and underage drinking at a bar. And Page as an actress is too much a free spirit to be completely believable as a Young Republican.

On the other hand, Poirier is a master at dialogue. His script crackles with sharp lines, and he gives all his scenes a splendid comic undertow. His characters arrive at their epiphanies -- despite Lawrence's denial that he even had one -- with intelligence and logic.

For his part, Murro allows actors leeway to develop richly idiosyncratic characters, and for a commercial maker he shows a noble resistance to selling his story with slick images and quick cuts. He paces scenes well and lets the emotions filter through with no undue emphasis or contrivance. This is a solid feature debut for Murro.

Cinematographer Toby Irwin and designer Patti Podesta make a campus film that for once feels like one. They superbly use the real locales and smartly dress sets in ways that suit the autumnal tones of the color scheme.

Cast:

Lawrence Wetherhold: Dennis Quaid

Janet: Sarah Jessica Parker

Chuck: Thomas Haden Church

Vanessa: Ellen Page

James: Ashton Holmes

Director: Noam Murro; Screenwriter: Mark Jude Poirier; Producers: Bridget Johnson, Michael Costigan, Michael London, Bruna Papandrea; Director of photography: Toby Irwin; Production designer: Patti Podesta; Music: Nuno Bettencourt; Costume designer: Amy Westcott; Editors: Robert Frazen, Yana Gorskaya.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter