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'Smart People' good for only about a C+
USA TODAY, April, 2008 by Claudia Puig
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Smart People
**1/2
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Smart People has a pretty decent cinematic IQ, but it falls short of qualifying for Mensa.
Though it features witty dialogue and good performances, the plot contrivances keep it from being an altogether winning enterprise.
A widowed and curmudgeonly professor (Dennis Quaid) finds his ordered and rather dull world upended by a visit from his ne'er-do-well adopted brother (Thomas Haden Church) and a chance meeting with a former student, now a doctor (Sarah Jessica Parker). Church has some of the film's funniest lines, along with Ellen Page, who as Quaid's daughter is essentially playing Juno again -- cheeky, bright and sassy.
It's hard, however, to buy that this smart cookie would develop an unseemly crush on her pot-smoking uncle. Also not entirely credible: the romance that develops between Parker's likable character and Quaid's imperious stuffed shirt, which culminates in an ending that ...
