filmfun

In Noam Murro’s directing debut of Smart People, just released on DVD August 12^th, he proves that some times smart people can’t always make the smartest decisions.

This slower paced movie is focused more on character development rather than action, but none-the-less it is entertaining and real because of its unique characters.

After experiencing a trauma induced seizure, a self-involved professor, Lawrence Wetherhold (Dennis Quaid), must re-evaluate his life and become more dependent on others. His doctor, who happens to be one of his forgotten students from years back, Janet (Sarah Jessica Parker), informs him he is suspended from driving for six months. To his unwanted rescue, his free-loading adopted brother, Chuck (Thomas Haden Church), comes to stay for a “win-win” situation in his eyes, in which he stays for free and becomes Lawrence’s chauffer. With his visit, Chuck, tries to encourage Lawrence’s over-achieving teenage daughter, Vanessa (Ellen Page) to lighten up and for Lawrence, a widower, to get back in the game and pursue Janet as a love interest.

This film’s strongest element is its make-up of individually complex main four characters played by exceptional actors. It is hard to pick out just one of the four lead actors as showing the most talent, because they equally make their own characters believable, comical, and at times heartwarming. All four characters are on different levels of intelligence but equally connected in their lacking abilities to connect with and create fulfilling relationships with others.

Through these characters’ problems, the film plays with conventional relationship titles. In Lawrence’s relationships as professor, his colleagues don’t understand him and he has a great problem with remembering past students. With his own adopted-brother, he treats him more like his chauffer than his brother and refers to him as “adopted” with every opportunity he gets. And finally Lawrence’s initial treatment of Janet is as a student to lecture rather than a love interest.

Vanessa, with her genius intelligence, she acts too old for her age in which she is more like house wife than daughter to her father, performing all household duties, becoming jealous of the threat of a girlfriend, and she accepts the lack of acknowledgment from her father for her exceptional educational accomplishments. Also because of Chuck’s willingness to show Vanessa how to have a good time as a teenager, in a drunken stupor, she tries to make a move on her adopted uncle as a love interest rather than uncle because “he’s adopted anyway, it doesn’t count.” These confused definitions and blurred boundaries of relationships emphasize each character’s inadequacies with relating to others properly.

Although each of the four main characters’ are interesting and well developed, the film seems to overlook the development needed of its supporting characters. Such as the idea of having a lesser talented college brother, James (Ashton Holmes), for Vanessa to look down on and to be unappreciated by his father. This would make a positive addition to the family dynamic, but it wasn’t developed enough throughout the film and seemed as though in the final edit many of his scenes may have been cut causing a lack of interest in his character for us the audience.

Also, the character who seemed to be Janet’s best friend and fellow doctor, was only used in two important but quick scenes. One in which we find out Janet had a crush on Lawrence when he was her professor in college. The other we find out Janet has a habit of self-sabotaging her relationships. Although he is not a very important character, since he was included in these two scenes he should be present in a few more to make his character believable as Janet’s best friend and to provide him with more purpose in the film. Again, possibly an editor’s mistake?

Even with its few flaws, this film’s strong base of interesting characters and their struggles to connect with others is what drives this film. It proves that no matter what your intellectual abilities or limitations may be you can never have all the answers when it comes to relationships.

-Shavon Keller