Smart People

NEW YORK (CNS) -- "Smart People" (Miramax/Groundswell) is a well-acted, edgy but ultimately only so-so comedy-drama set at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Self-absorbed English professor and widower Lawrence Wetherold (a fine Dennis Quaid) is in midlife crisis. A grouchy and often arrogant misanthrope, he doesn't even take the trouble to remember his students' names.

When his car is impounded, he suffers a mishap trying to retrieve it from a fenced lot, and winds up in the emergency room, where he's treated by Dr. Janet Hartigan (Sarah Jessica Parker), who was once his student years before. (Of course, he doesn't even remember her.)

At home, his freeloading adopted brother, Chuck (Thomas Haden Church), has come to stay in a household that includes Lawrence's precocious, overachieving daughter, Vanessa (Ellen Page), a Young Republican with her eye on Stanford University, and a distant intellectual son (Ashton Holmes) whose poetry Lawrence doesn't even bother to read, until The New Yorker magazine shows an interest.

What is clear is that they are all lonely individuals who long for emotional connection. And by the end, they seem to make it.

Somehow, though, the end result isn't as engaging as other independent films of this nature, such as "Wonder Boys," "Little Miss Sunshine" or "Sideways." It's neither as funny nor as poignant as those titles.

Still, Mark Jude Poirier's intelligent screenplay -- well paced by first-time feature director Noam Munro, who has heretofore done award-winning commercials -- is perceptive of human nature in many ways, but strong language and unconventional plot elements may bother viewers. For instance, in her emotional confusion and immaturity, young Vanessa misinterprets the attentions of her Uncle Chuck, and throws herself at him, much to their later mutual embarrassment.

Despite the first-rate performances, sometimes clever writing and a morally sound wrap-up, the film somehow seems a bit more dispiriting than uplifting.

The film contains nongraphic premarital sex, condom use, frank sexual remarks, rough language, brief rear nudity, brief teenage drinking and drug use. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is L -- limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R -- restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

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Copyright (c) 2007 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops