Smart People (2008) **

I don’t think I’ve written about a movie in a long time.  That doesn’t mean I haven’t been watching any.  I guess I haven’t had a real strong opinion about any of the movies I’ve seen lately.  I don’t really  have that strong of an opinion on “Smart People” either, but I just watched it and I’m procrastinating on doing any work right now, so here goes.

I usually really enjoy the actors in this film.  Thomas Hayden Church, who plays the “adoptive brother” Chuck is always awesome and funny.  I put the words “adoptive brother” in quotation marks because I thought they made too big of a deal about that.  First of all, the characters of Chuck and Lawrence look enough alike that I thought it would come out that they were biological brothers and that Lawrence just called him his adopted brother like all older brothers do to their younger, pesky siblings.  But no, I guess not.  Now then, it seems like they mentioned he was adopted so as not to gross people out completely when his niece plants a big wet one on him when he gets her plastered.  That’s fine, but why did they have to mention his adopted status every time he was introduced or spoken of?  In an actual family where two brothers are not blood related they just call each other brothers. 

I enjoyed some parts of the film in anticipation that there would be something really interesting happen eventually.  Nothing did.  I get the concept of the movie and I like that each character grew from beginning to end, but I wasn’t really entertained throughout that journey.  It needed to be either funnier or sadder.

I love Ellen Page.  “Juno” was one of my favorite movies, but her character here was very similar to that one. I hope not to find out that she is a one-note wonder. 

Dennis Quaid plays Lawrence, a university lit professor who’s been a widower for a number of years.  He’s very cliche with the tweed and corduroy blazers, messy hair, and scruffy beard.  He ends up in the emergency room and his doctor (Sarah Jessica Parker) turns out to be a former student.  They end up dating but I can’t figure out why.  I don’t see the attraction between them.  It’s like they deleted a few crucial scenes from the movie.  But, I watched all of the deleted scenes and they’re not there either.  Maybe I missed something, but I’m not willing to go back and watch it again.  If you figure it out, please let me know.