"Smart People" is a little too slow to be brilliant

Noam Murro's "Smart People," written by novelist Mark Jude Poirier, is enjoyable for its words, and for the way its smart actors toss those words out like flying daggers.

"You're a giant toddler," says lit professor Lawrence Wetherhold (Dennis Quaid) to his visiting brother Chuck (Thomas Haden Church), appalled by how Chuck seems to float through life untethered. Likewise, Chuck is horrified by his brother's family, consisting of widower Lawrence, surly daughter Vanessa (Ellen Page of "Juno") and son James (Ashton Holmes). "We could use a little anti-venom in the snake pit," says Chuck, welcoming an unexpected Thanksgiving guest.

The unhappy writer/professor is a familiar type in the movies, and Quaid's early appearances, wearing a grim corduroy jacket as he yawns through his classes, seem like a performance we've seen before. (He makes his students wear name tags, because he can't be bothered to learn their names.) But the movie, while keeping Lawrence at its center, divides its attention among a number of characters, including a non-Wetherhold: Dr. Janet Hartigan (Sarah Jessica Parker), a lonely emergency-room physician who long ago nurtured a crush on Lawrence while he was her English professor. She enters the family circle and alters it, incurring both Lawrence's tentative interest (though he's haunted by memories of his late wife) and Vanessa's steely hatred.

Nobody does steely quite like the basso-voiced Page — her Vanessa is a sort of Young Republican version of Juno, complete with a Reagan photo in her bedroom — and the actress finds some wicked humor in her character. Explaining to her uncle that they could get a tax write-off if they take her late mother's clothes to Goodwill, Vanessa fairly glows with delight; tax breaks and feeling superior are what make this young woman tick. (Uncle Chuck, in Church's inimitable doltish drawl, gives her some valuable advice later: "If you tell people they're stupid, they'll usually hate you.")

"Smart People" feels slow in spots, and its perfunctory set decoration doesn't help us connect to the characters: Janet, for example, lives in an utterly personality-free apartment. She's the least developed character in the movie; did Murro intend for her to be so blank? There's little Parker can do with the character, other than her usual sparkly charm. But she's a welcome beam of light in the dark Wetherhold family, and the movie's final moments (including a sweet final credit sequence of photographs of what-came-after) are a lovely illustration of how love can change us.

Janet, like everyone else in the movie, is a smart person; and this ultimately likable film is pretty smart as well.

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com