Book-smart vs. life-smart

0 Comments | Philadelphia Inquirer, The, April, 2008 | by Carrie Rickey Inquirer Movie Critic

Just because you're the brightest guy in the classroom doesn't mean you're not a dimwit outside of it. That's the point of  Smart People , a morose comedy that down to the nanometer calibrates the distance between book-smart and life-smart. Lawrence Wetherhold (Dennis Quaid), a professor of Victorian literature at Carnegie-Mellon, is furry and furious as a bear poked awake during hibernation.

Lawrence has even less personal charm than Jeff Daniels' similarly conceived professor in  The Squid and the Whale , and is even more contemptuous of his pupils and supersmart spawn. Son James (Ashton Holmes) is a student at Carnegie-Mellon, struggling free of Lawrence's orbit. Daughter Vanessa (Ellen Page) is an intellectual snob and her father's satellite. Enter Lawrence's...