Smart People

Review in a Hurry:  After an accident lands him in the ER, a pompous literature professor (Dennis Quaid) falls for his doctor/former student (Sarah Jessica Parker). Smart People scores high marks for its intelligence, wit and fine cast but slips a grade for remaining as aloof as its main character.

The Bigger Picture:  Is "dysfunctional family" redundant? You betcha. But the Wetherhold clan is more effed-up than most, thanks to self-absorbed Lawrence (Quaid), a widower who teaches at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University. This Professor Misanthrope has managed to alienate his collegiate son (Ashton Holmes) and turn his teenage daughter, Vanessa (Ellen Page, doing her tart-tongued Juno thing), into a friendless overachiever.

Lawrence's miserable life gets a shake-up when he suffers a head injury and can't drive for six months. Only his slacker adoptive brother, Chuck (Thomas Haden Church), can help with chauffeuring—but in exchange for a place to crash.

Freewheeling Chuck forms an unlikely friendship with ultraconservative Vanessa and gets her drunk and stoned (but thankfully not preggers). Meanwhile, Lawrence is on the mend with some sexual healing from ER chief Dr. Janet Hartigan (Parker), who has long harbored a crush on the prof.

This seriocomedy gathers talented actors and gives them funny, acerbic things to say...but then doesn't know what to do with them as people. Without a strong dramatic thrust, the story stalls midway and spins its wheels. As much as you want everyone's emotional baggage to be unpacked onscreen, these damaged people mostly just drift along until the inevitable happy but unearned ending.

Though intermittently entertaining, Smart People would've been smart to study Little Miss Sunshine, which cleverly mixed dysfunction and laugh lines with a solid plot and satisfying emotional payoffs. Perhaps we should pile the Wetherholds into a VW bus and send 'em cross-country to see what happens?

The 180—a Second Opinion:  If you're sick of cerebral flicks about intellectual misfits—e.g., anything by directors Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach—you might wanna seek something more brainless.