Characterization and wittiness show in ‘Smart People’
By Kim Puckett, Staff Writer
With its strong characterizations, pompous attitudes and massive vocabularies, the independent film “Smart People” achieved success at the Sundance Film Festival before its mainstream debut on April 11.
Dennis Quaid’s (“Vantage Point”) character Lawrence Wetherhold, a haughty and downright grumpy literature professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania, belittles his colleagues, students and even his own children in this film about a broken family recovering from tragedy.
Years after the death of Wetherhold’s wife, Caroline, the spare room remains filled with her clothes. Wetherhold’s son James (Ashton Holmes of “Normal Adolescent Behavior”) leads a separate life at the same university at which Lawrence is tenured, and his daughter Vanessa played by Ellen Page (“Juno”) does all she can to gain her father’s elusive approval.
Vanessa, a pretentious overachiever, maps her world views completely from her father’s elitist beliefs and attitudes. With her sights set on Stanford University and the perfect SAT score, Vanessa completely lacks the social life of an average teenager.
When Wetherhold’s funny, immature and financially unstable adopted brother Chuck (Thomas Haden Church of “Spider Man 3”) moves into the family home, he wins Vanessa over and becomes her only friend. Chuck leads Vanessa into a few misadventures, making his best attempt to find the human in whom he calls a “17-year-old android.”
Because of her friendless childhood, Vanessa misunderstands her adopted uncle’s attention toward her.
The interaction between Vanessa and Chuck shows her social inexperience and need for companionship. Page manages to use Vanessa’s hard, insensitive personality to incite sympathy and humor in the audience. Under first-time director Noam Murro, Page’s performance is by far the best, outshining more veteran actors Quaid and Sarah Jessica Parker (“Sex and the City”).
Parker plays Janet Hartigan, an emergency room physician and Wetherhold’s love interest. Although Hartigan serves as the new life breathed into the Wetherhold family, Parker brings an air of boredom and insincerity to the character.
The most distracting facet of Parker’s character comes in the form of high-heeled shoes. As head of the ER, Hartigan wears Stiletto heels and a lab coat during every shift, adding a little Carrie Bradshaw (her character on “Sex and the City”) to the medical profession.
In contrast to Parker’s flat performance, Church’s character Chuck brings comic relief and a sense of normalcy to the Wetherhold house. Sleeping in long underwear with an open butt flap and hilarious one-liners make Chuck the funniest and surprisingly the most emotionally content character.
The foremost telling, hilarious and yet depressing scene in the movie comes when Page’s character is drunk at a local bar.
She stumbles out of the bathroom, face-to-face with some of her more popular female classmates. Vanessa slurs, “What is it like to be stupid?” And one of her classmates snaps back, “What is it like to sit alone at lunch every day?” To this remark, Vanessa only replies, “It sucks.”
The tagline of “Smart People” is “Sometimes the smartest people have the most to learn.” The characters’ evolutions are the real focus of the film. As the characters learn about themselves and their interaction with other people, audience members see that intelligence is only brain deep.
The heady dialogue and intricate relationships resonate even after the film ends, but make sure you stay for the end credits, because the movie doesn’t end until the last name scrolls.
