Brains aren't everything. Smart People"" offers a father/daughter pair of misanthropic academics as they come to terms with their humanity. From the same people who brought ""Sideways"" to theaters, this highbrow comedy banks on superb character sketching and a solid cast to deliver a comedy that manages to make even the most self-involved characters likeable in the end.
Lawrence Wetherhold (Dennis Quaid) is a sullen English professor and widower whose adopted brother Chuck (Thomas Haden Church) forces his way into his life just as Lawrence discovers he needs a driver after suffering a seizure. His daughter Vanessa is an honor student with a picture of Ronald Reagan above her bed and the insistent notion she'll have time for a life when she gets into Stanford. As Lawrence tries to start up a romance with his ER doctor and former student Janet (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Vanessa tries to come to terms with her father moving on from her own role as a surrogate wife, a slew of pratfalls exposes the human error that not even the most pretentious father and daughter can cover up.
Quaid plays his role well to remind us that he does have some acting chops. The disdain Lawrence holds for everyone whom he finds intellectually inferior drips from Quaid's lips as he delivers poisonous line after line to his students, fellow faculty members and condescending publishers. What's remarkable is that Quaid's natural likability carries over to a character so unlikable. He scolds his daughter for drinking, drops in on his son unexpectedly in his dorm to chastise his overspending and tries desperately to seem interested in his dinner date's back story - all acts that could be played simply as anger but instead have a subtle tone of irritated good-humor.
Ellen Page steals the show playing a Young Republican-type who has all the sarcasm of her last role in ""Juno,"" adding biting quips at every possible interlude. She too is emotionally repressed and obsesses about proving her intellectual superiority, but the conservative ideology and unusually large vocabulary that Page wields make her seem artificial and beyond her years.
Thomas Haden Church acts as the chaos that forces the pair from their ivory towers, a failure who seems far more content than the rest of his successful family. His relationship with Vanessa as he tries to get her to relax is especially hilarious, taking her out to bars and offering her a joint as Vanessa mutters, ""Great, now I'm in an after-school special.""
Not all the characters are great - Sarah Jessica Parker just seems depressed the entire film. The elder son James (Ashton Holmes) is utterly wasted, a character who seems to vary wildly depending on what the scene dictates.
Those who appreciate higher-minded comedies won't be disappointed, as the superb characters and dialogue absolutely deliver.
