Dennis Quaid plays Lawrence Wetherhold, a brilliant university professor who specialises in Victorian Literature. While he may be an intellectual whiz in this department, his abilities with his own family are another matter entirely. His teenage daughter (Elliot Page) reprises her Juno character as a motormouth who follows in her father’s misery-loving footsteps. His brother (Thomas Haden Church) is a good-for-nothing loser who turns up on Lawrence’s doorstep, expecting a place to stay. This and a chance meeting with an ex-student (Sarah Jessica Parker) prompts Lawrence to haul himself out of his middle-aged slump.
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Trailing on the coat-tails of recent indie-quirk successes Little Miss Sunshine and Juno, Smart People, a new film starring Ellen Page and Dennis Quaid does little to change the formula that made those films so popular with audiences.
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Dysfunctional family seriocomedy is well cast, but characters and conflicts lack the sharper definition of similar recent exercises like "Little Miss Sunshine," "The Upside of Anger" and Noah Baumbach's films.
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There's nothing world shattering about Smart People. No one is ever going to call it a "must see" movie. But it is a trim, intelligent, reasonably amusing little movie. Call it a "could see."
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The great virtue of Smart People, attributable to Noam Murro’s easygoing direction as well as to Mr. Poirier’s wandering screenplay, lies in its general preference for small insights over grand revelations.
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Dennis Quaid is mostly lost at sea as Lawrence Wetherhold, the Carnegie Mellon lit professor; he apparently saw fit to tinker with his performance as filming went along, greeting us in some scenes as a noticeably swishy highbrow, while at other moments he's channeling the smiling, drunken menace of Nicholson's Jack Torrance.
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Dennis Quaid is excellent as a grouchy professor whose frozen heart is melted in a film that is all character and no story.
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Poirier is a master at dialogue. His script crackles with sharp lines and he gives all his scenes a splendid comic undertow.
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Strong performances and a few laughs, but the story feels lazy next to superior efforts recently in the same genre.
Full reviewSmart People is available to stream in New Zealand now on Google Play and Apple TV.
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