An engaging movie that suffers just a little bit from the overly-indie nature of the story and production.

Writing: As Mark Poirier’s first writing credit, one can definitely see the potential of his writing. But I think this effort falls just short of the mark. When you compare this film to something like Wonder Boys, which has a certain amount of similarity, it would be hard to call Smart People a masterpiece (I’m a big fan of Wonder Boys). Then again, Wonder Boys is written by Michael Chabon, a fantastic author. What you get from Smart People is something more akin to The Savages - a smart and interesting character drama that wanders a little bit too much in narrative. In other words, an indie character dramedy.

Production: There’s nothing to single out as particularly impressive about the production, but there’s little to complain about either. It’s solid and gets the job. The editing is a little bit too loose for its own good, but it’s not terrible.

Cast: There’s no surprise in the fact that the acting is the true highlight of this film. Dennis Quaid is a hugely underutilized actor these days, and this movie proves that he should be getting more work. He really makes this imbalanced character work very well. Sarah Jessica Parker is a great foil for him. While they might not have a magical chemistry together on screen, they do in fact play well off each other. Thomas Haden Church is another vastly underrated actor, who needs to get more great roles. He works perfectly as the happy, slacker, adopted brother. And he plays off of the wonderful Ellen Page perfectly. Now, it’s hard to not judge or compare Ellen Page’s performance here with her spot-on perfect performance in Juno (my favorite movie of 2007). It’s a different character (quite different, in fact), and she nails it. Sure, there’s a couple comparable aspects, but for the most part, she’s hitting a different tone with the character of this daughter. It’s the relationship with “Uncle Chuck” that really sparkles, though. Page and Church get the best material, and they get a better chance to shine. Ashton Holmes does a nice job as the more incidental son character. And hey, it’s fun having somebody like Christine Lahti in a toss-away minor character role.

Music: Guitarist Nuno Bettencourt is responsible for one of the most stereotypically indie aspects of this film, the guitar-based music-score. Smacking of everything cheap and simple, I would much rather have seen this movie get a Thomas Newman or Rachel Portman score. Heck, drop in Christopher Young’s great score from Wonder Boys…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 at 11:21 pm and is filed under Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.