Smart People: Critic Reviews

The fun of Smart People, which was written by Mark Jude Poirier and directed by Noam Murro, is seeing Quaid bite, with darkly funny and misanthropic gusto, into the acrid soul of a man whose life has curdled.

The excellent script for Smart People is the work of Mark Jude Poirier, a fiction writer who has clearly spent enough time around English departments to have studied the tribal ways of the literary professoriate with ethnographic rigor.

Smarter than your average romantic comedy it may be, but this family-dysfunction indie is playing it a bit safe.

Though the principals are so appealing with their smart, comical exchanges, the film's forced situations keep it from being the clever, engaging tale it aspires to be.

It's impossible to tell whether the film's ending is happy because it's happy or because it's ending.

None of the characters' or the filmmakers' knowledge illuminates, deepens, or complicates this movie in a way that keeps you from thinking longingly of Curtis Hanson's Wonder Boys.

It's all action, no reaction. One minute they're miserable; 90 minutes later, aww better.

In what world does Smart People exist? Clearly not the real one, though this dramedy wants to think it's filled with ironic insights about love and family.

Smart People made me happy from start to finish.

The thorny dialogue, the rancorous arguments, the unexplained surliness of Lawrence's son -- all that nasty stuff melts away, covering up plot weaknesses in a warm glow of nuclear-family bonhomie.

[A] middling romantic comedy.

In his first film as director, Noam Murro creates moments of comic disconnection, relieved by minuscule surges of warmth. He's very precise; he has a nice touch.

Parker, cast as the Life-Affirming Option, comes across as rather drab. Quaid disappears beneath his beard and into his role, yet because Lawrence is such a remote character, it's hard to care much. Page's role is pretty thin and monotonous.

While Smart People, wouldn't necessarily have taken off with a different leading actor, Quaid's self-conscious characterization calls attention to the artificiality of the story's construction.

The characters are credible and sharply observed and all four actors go to town.

The overreaching script by novelist Mark Poirier is intermittently funny. One gets the sense that Poirier was aiming for Scrabulous dialogue but his movie is barely of Boggle quality.

The film brandishes the same anti-intellectual cliche we've heard time and again: Extremely smart folks are inherently unpleasant, uptight and unhappy. 'Tis better to be a touch dumb.

Smart is indeed the word for Smart People, an extremely well-acted film that manages to be simultaneously funny and troubling.

First-time director Noam Murro successfully creates a world you want to spend time in, even if it's a world marred by self-absorption and missed opportunities.

So much good work must not go overlooked. I just loved this movie because it's witty, intellectual without being pretentious, and filled with characters who are logically stressed and anxious to connect to a world outside of themselves.

It ends up less a dark comedy than a medium-gray one, the impact further muffled by its marinating in a tepid pool of generic soft-rock sounds.

Smart People is an indie film that plays the (jangle, jangle) same chords (strum, strum) as a lot of other heartfelt comedies about too-wise children and codgers taking humanity lessons.

Call the cops. Oscar nominees Ellen Page and Thomas Haden Church steal Smart People right from under the noses of its ostensible stars, Sarah Jessica Parker and Dennis Quaid.

When you toss this many balls in the air, several are bound to be forgotten.

Just one person saves Smart People from being completely wretched. It's the presence of Thomas Haden Church.