If you have ever seen or been around academia type, this is a perfect representation of their life. I wish I was joking.
Smarter than you think
Lawrence Wetherhold is floating through life. Since the passing of his wife, he hasn’t been the same. He has raised a disconnected daughter named Vanessa, who mimics his life perfectly. He has a son in college who wants nothing to do with him. He has a brother who is a lovable loser, leeching off Lawrence when he can. Lawrence’s lifeless soul comes to a stop when he falls head first into asphalt after trying to retrieve his towed car from an impound lot. When he wakes up in the hospital, he comes face to face with former student Dr. Janet Hartigan who has always had a thing for her former professor. Lawrence begins to wake up from his lively coma of life through Hartigan and soon finds out that he might be too late in getting to know (and correct) his family issues that have gone on too long.
Noam Murro’s take of this professor in need of a kick-start in life is dead-on. It’s a wonderful, yet simple, take on a man’s life as a recovering widower. He paints this bleak, boring picture of Wetherhold’s life and his dysfunctional family. In the same vain of Alexander Payne’s Sideways, Murro brings all of the characters out in their own individual bubbles. Lawrence is the struggling father, Vanessa (played by Ellen Page) is the non-independent daughter who hasn’t developed her own life. You’ve got his son James (played by Ashton Holmes) who is so disconnected from his family that he dreads his father’s visits and his sister’s presence. And finally you’ve got the lovable loser brother Chuck (played by Thomas Haden Church) who is the smartest, yet dumbest, of the bunch. Murro has all of these individuals that bring together their own contribution to the overall story.
Now the story itself is intriguingly simple, which is what makes the movie brilliant. Murro shows how disrupted even the smartest people can get when posed with tragedy (which is the death of the mother in the Wetherhold’s household). The movie show how sometimes human emotion can’t be figured out through a book or through logic, rather it can be figured out through the love of family and using common sense as your guide. Chuck’s role in the family, the lovable loser, was to lead the family out of their funk and back into life itself. His character has no rhyme or reason for being, but just is. That’s exactly how Murro’s Chuck lives his life, he just is. That’s a brilliant character that leads a brilliant story.
Now, the cons of the movie. While not completely necessary, it would have been nice to see a bit more backstory about the mother. You, the audience, can only feel enough compassion for the family because you know they lost the mother in the household. How she passed away is very important, as is when she passed away. Those two things are vital because they provide deeper details into the characters that surround this dead woman. For example, Vanessa’s character is clearly attached to her father. She is smart like him, grown up for someone in high school and obsessed with success in her academic life. She’s basically looking for being and finding it through her father’s values. Now, if we knew how old she was when her mother passed and how it affected her, even briefly, than it would add more depth to Vanessa. It would bring a bit more emotion into what basically is an emotionless film (until the end). It would provide a stronger sense of purpose. You’ve got to have this in there or otherwise the empathy from audience members won’t be as strong.
The other con to Smart People is the presence of the James, the brother of Vanessa. He’s introduced, but not explained. He has no real role in the movie, other than he doesn’t like his father very much and doesn’t particularly love his sister either. He is pretty much a weak link in the character chain, which hurts the story a bit. If you’re going to introduce a very emotional character that is somewhat screaming for attention, you have to follow through equally with the other characters. You can’t simply give a member of a dysfunctional family a minor role in a larger dysfunctional problem.
Aside from these two problems, the film is good. It’s along the same lines as Sideways and it contains some of the same drab elements that make it great. It starts out slow, but take in the complicated characters. Once you do that, the story will smooth out. Stick with it, it’s worth the payoff.
Smart set of features, or so it seems
As for the features on this DVD, here’s what you get:
• The Smartest People – interviews with the producers, cast and crew
• Audio Commentary – view the film with commentary by director Noam Murro and writer Mark
Jude Poirier
• Not So Smart – a collection of outtakes from the film
• Deleted Scenes – nine deleted scenes
• Smart People At Sundance – watch exclusive footage from the premiere of Smart People at the
2008 Sundance Film Festival
The outtakes are hilarious, plain and simple. The interviews are very nicely done, the deleted scenes are okay and the Sundance footage works up to an extent. The real beauty of these features is the commentary. Insightful, entertaining and worth your ear’s time. Not bad set of features, but it’s missing a bit of beef that most good features contain nowadays.
GRE? SAT? ACT? Not as entertaining as this movie
It’s a simply smart movie that deserves far more kudos than it has received. You’ll find plenty here to keep you entertained and very strong characters to back up a good story. Set with decent features, it’s at least (and we mean least) worth a rental. If you like Sideways, please purchase immediately.