Before I begin, I need you to do me a favor. Watch the trailer. Please.
Smart People
Now I know it doesn't look like the best movie in the world, but I saw this preview with my girlfriend about a month ago and we both agreed it would be worth a rent. I then completely forgot about the movie; I didn't read any reviews about it or anything. Yesterday I was browsing the list of movies in my local Red box and was delighted to see Smart People had just released this week. Remembering the preview I had seen earlier, reminding myself how much I liked Ellen Page in Juno, and recalling how funny Thomas Haden Church can be, I smiled, quickly rented the movie and skipped home to enjoy a delightful film with my girlfriend.
The reason I needed you to watch the trailer is because I need some validation. If you had seen this preview, wouldn't you think that this was an ok rental? Dennis Quaid, Ellen Page, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Thomas Haden Church? How bad could it possibly be? I was confident that in no way was this movie going to be a complete and utter shitstorm.
I was wrong. I was very wrong.
I am a pretty patient guy and I can sit through just about anything. I think it's a real sign of this virtue that I was able to watch this film in it's entirety. The sad thing is, is that it isn't a very long movie. Just barely over an hour and a half at 95 min. I would say about 92 min of it is agonizingly boring. The three minutes that were actually tolerable are the few and far between instances in which Thomas Haden Church delivers a perfectly timed one-liner which offers the viewer a brief chuckle before plummeting them back into the story of four characters of which they could not give two shits about.
Dennis Quaid plays a college professor who thinks his shit doesn't stink. His wife is dead and he has raised his daughter (Ellen Page) to be the over achieving know-it-all that looks down on less intelligent people and shows them the same contempt that her father shows his students. One former student of Quad's is played by Sarah Jessica Parker who has since become a physician. Apparently Parker's character had something of a crush on Quaid's character when she was in college and when Quaid falls over a fence and is rushed to a hospital, guess who is there to mend him?
The relationships between the characters are implausible. Quaid is an asshole, yet for some reason Sarah Jessica Parker falls for Dennis Quaid and there really isn't any explanation for it. Then after they sleep together for the first time Sarah Jessica Parker blows him off for no reason and then after awhile shows up at their house for Christmas dinner.
The plot is boring. When it wasn't boring, it was predictable. When it wasn't predictable, it was cliche. By cliche I mean that nothing was going on, I'm guessing the writers didn't know what to do next. They thought to themselves, how can we highten the drama? "I know, we'll make Sarah Jessica Parker pregnant! Oh snap! What a great idea." This came out of nowhere, was completely uncalled for, did nothing for the story, was never actually resolved in the movie, and is an exhausted storyline only used to make it seem like something important was actually happening.
As if all of this wasn't bad enough, the soundtrack was terrible. Go
here and click preview all and listen to it while reading the rest of this. Apparently it was primarily done by Nuno Bettencourt, an artist I am unfamiliar with. The songs were so bad they were actually distracting.
I was so glad when this movie ended. I turned it off as soon as the first credit came up. I couldn't wait to go do something else. I've read some reviews about it since watching it and I was surprised to see that critics actually didn't hate it nearly as much as I did. In fact, some gave it pretty favorable reviews. Although most reviews suggest other, better, movies with similar story lines; which to me is like saying "This has been done before, and it has been done better".
If you're feeling masochistic, then give it a watch. Otherwise avoid like the plague.
