Everybody loves quirky movies. You know the type -- subjective films that expose the somewhat weird underbelly of America. They have characters that, though a "little out there," you fall in love with in the end. The films are shot in places you'd never imagine wanting to visit -- Newark, Pittsburgh, Cambridge, Flint. The success of movies like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Savages, Wonder Boys and I Heart Huckabees signals our love to catch a glimpse of the quirky world of the everyday, of people just like us who have stories to tell. Most are products of independent production companies, but since major companies caught wind of the success of indie films, they wasted no time creating their own indie departments (for example, Fox Studios created "Fox Searchlight" to specialize in artsy films).
Perhaps this would explain why Smart People, released April 11, follows the quirky film formula but doesn't feel satisfying. Unlike its predecessors, it's a film whose eccentricity has been packaged in response to the growing market for indie films. Smart People walks in the exact same footsteps as those films that came before it -- get some offbeat characters, provide them with witty dialogue, put them against a commonplace background, give them everyday problems, throw in a killer soundtrack, and the rest writes itself.
So here's the rundown -- Lawrence Wetherhold (Dennis Quaid) is a grumpy jerk who teaches Victorian literature at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. You can tell he's a grump because he wears a scowl throughout the entire movie. He has a daughter who is also a jerk -- Vanessa (Ellen Page) is a Young Republican overachiever with a 1970s mom-haircut and chip on her shoulder. Her mother, Lawrence's wife, died several years earlier, so now they're unhappy about everything. Lawrence has a son, James (Ashton Holmes), with whom he has a distant relationship and who is a freshman or something at Carnegie. Lawrence also has a delinquent adopted brother, Chuck (Thomas Haden Church), who provides comic relief.
Got all that? Plot -- Lawrence, as aforementioned, is a grump with no friends. He has an accident and winds up in the hospital as hot Dr. Janet Hartigan's patient. Lawrence finds out that Janet (Sarah Jessica Parker) was once his student at Carnegie, and they start dating. Daughter Vanessa gets angry, then she loosens up and gets drunk and bonds with delinquent Chuck. Lawrence has to publish a book because he hasn't published anything in awhile. He and Janet date some more. Some other stuff happens, then the movie ends.
The basic problem with the movie is this -- none of it feels real. Ellen Page had little work to do; she just read snippets of her Juno lines. SJP is a watered-down Carrie Bradshaw, and her relationship with Quaid, a crusty old guy with a gut, is bogus and unlikely. The tensions within the movie don't feel tense enough. Sure, Lawrence has to publish a book, and Vanessa has to get into Stanford, and Chuck is a freeloader, and James probably has some issues too, but I didn't really see the gravity of any of these situations.
What's worse is that nothing really gets resolved -- it just kind of goes away. It's as if Miramax shot like 19 hours of footage, realized it only had an hour and half, cut out 75 percent of the movie and tried to fill the rest in with montages. Hell, they needed all the time they could get to explain things. They even let the credits roll over some of the ending.
Smart People is the debut of writer Mark Jude Poirier and director Noam Murro, and the result was not good. It was rushed, forced and kind of boring. What is most disappointing may be the fact that quirky indie films are becoming a style. These are films that used to break the mold visually, thematically and emotionally -- and now everyone wants to make one.
So listen, Miramax/Lionsgate/Fox/New Line Cinema, there can only be so many Junos. I want my $9 back.
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