Director Noam Murro—who has directed commercials for Nike, Volkswagen and Starbucks—moves into feature films with Smart People, a movie far from the sleek advertisements these would have suggested. It's the story of the reawakening of an overbearing college professor and his family: Lawrence Wetherhold ( Dennis Quaid ) , son James ( Ashton Holmes ) and daughter Vanessa ( Ellen Page ) , a caustic high school overachiever. They're a trio that characters from Margot at the Wedding would love. Audiences who love seeing cranky, emotionally blocked characters find their prickly way to redemption will be happy to endure the withering onscreen insults, but I didn't have much use for these dyspeptic folks and was happy to see them go at the fade-out.
The plot of Smart People has two threads: a tenuous romance between Lawrence and former student and current doctor Janet ( Sarah Jessica Parker ) , who attends to him in the ER after he has an accident. The other plot involves the arrival of Lawrence's ne'er-do-well, self-absorbed brother Chuck ( Thomas Haden Church ) , who is in the movie to represent the not-so-bright audience members. Chuck screws up constantly but lets it roll off his back and he exhorts the uptight, brainiac Wetherholds to do the same. The movie details the convergence of these two emotional ideologies.
Lawrence, meanwhile, is about as uptight as they come. To make him appear more 'professor-like,' I guess, Quaid is given a beard; a phony, protruding gut ( in real life the actor is renowned for his six pack abs ) ; and an acrid personality—one so disagreeable that his own publishers suggest he title his next book, You Can't Read. Vanessa is even more of a pill. When Janet phones her up from the ER to inform her of her father's accident, Vanessa is so tart that Janet calls her a 'bitch.' I thought, 'My sentiments exactly' and then wrote on my notepad, 'Why does this actor irritate me so much?'
Here I must confess that I have my own cranky axe to grind: I can't stand Ellen Page ( pictured ) . I know, I know, most of the movie going world seems to find this young actress God's gift to cinema, but I am not among them. I have seen Page in Hard Candy, X-Men: The Last Stand, Juno and, now, Smart People. I have also watched her interviewed by Barbara Walters and others on TV, and I honestly can't tell the difference between the condescending teen on the screen and the condescending young adult off of it. Maybe Page's screen personality just rubs me the wrong way—the way that Jennifer Aniston's bangs always do, the way that Tom Cruise's overwrought intensity does. Everyone, critic and casual moviegoer alike, has inexplicable reasons why they either respond or don't respond to certain film personalities. But responses can change: I used to feel the same antipathy ( big-time ) toward Richard Gere, and now like him in just about everything he does. And I loved Aniston's performance in Friends With Money. So maybe Page will grow on me as the movies add up—but maybe not.
Part of my crankiness has to do with not just Page but with the over-familiarity of the movie, which comes not just from seeing Baumbach's pictures, but a whole crop of similarly driven indie films. In fact, I assumed this was an Alexander Payne movie until I saw Murro's name in the credits, so closely does it resemble plot points from Sideways and Election. Personally, I like my crabby conversion character movies along the lines of, say, The Accidental Tourist, where the transformation of fussbudget William Hurt to an unpredictable life of messiness with kooky Geena Davis was accompanied by the syrupy, plaintive John Williams music. Maybe Page could play the Geena Davis part in the eventual remake. She could add her innate know-it-all attitude to the role. Maybe by then I'll even get her and will respond—but maybe not.
Another screen hunk—Ryan Reynolds—also steps out of familiar territory in Chaos Theory, a movie that starts out promising a modern-day Rock Hudson-Doris Day sex comedy and then segues into a sodden relationship drama, although neither is particularly satisfying.
I am big on the 'To Do' lists but Reynolds' character, Frank Allen, a renowned efficiency expert, has got me beat by a mile. This is a guy with note cards in his pocket—he's anal to the point of pathological. Naturally, Frank's obsession is going to get off-track in a major way—hence, the potentially naughty Hudson-Day sex mix-ups, where a series of misunderstandings widens until the male character has dug a hole so deep with the leading lady he might has well keep going until he reaches China. The plot heads off in this direction, and the Bacharach-Mancini '60s soft-pop loungy background score help take it there.
But Reynolds is no Hudson or Jack Lemmon, and Emily Mortimer—as his frustrated wife, though fine—doesn't exactly have the effervescence of Day or Dorothy Provine. Reynolds tries hard but doesn't seem to have the talent for farce and there's none of the madness or gleeful desperation in his eyes needed for such a role. Stuart Townsend, in the Dean Martin smarmy best-friend role, offers promise, as does Constance Zimmer as Mortimer's acidic gal pal. However, both are sidelined when the movie veers into deep waters ( though Townsend is brought back as a plot device ) .
One thing is for sure: The movie lives up to its title. How else to explain the random switch from such a dizzy set-up with such promise to a typical, by-the-numbers relationship drama? Chaos theory, indeed.
Film Note
—The 24th Annual Chicago Latino Film Festival continues through April 16 and includes the Chicago premiere of Tal Como Somos ( Just As We Are ) , a documentary that follows the lives of six Latino gay and bisexual men ( including a Chicago couple ) and a transgender woman. It screens Fri., April 11, at 8:30 p.m. at Instituto Cervantes, 31 W. Ohio. Jesus Ramirez-Valles and Judith McCray—the film's executive producer and, director-producer, respectively—are both Chicago residents. My interview with Ramierez-Valles—an associate professor of public health at the Univesity of Chicago whose research of the impact of HIV/AIDS and the stigmatization of Latino LGBT persons within their own community forms the basis of the documentary—appears in this week's online edition of Windy City Times. For more information about the festival, visit www.LatinoCulturalCenter.org or phone the fest's hotline at 312-409-1757.
Check out my archived reviews at www.windycitytimes.com or www.knightatthemovies.com . Readers can leave feedback at the latter Web site, where there is also ordering information on my book of collected film reviews, Knight at the Movies 2004-2006.