In one scene of the 2008 film Smart People, high school senior Vanessa Wetherhold admonishes her uncle Chuck to make his bed in the morning. “It sets the tone for the entire day,” she explains. His immediate reply is, “How do you know what kind of tone I want to set?”
That’s the question I ended up mulling over the most as I watched the events of Smart People unfold. What kind of tone did the filmmakers want to set? Was this supposed to be a comedy? A drama? Was I supposed to take these characters and their problems seriously or not? I couldn’t figure it out, as the characters’ actions were really all over the map without the benefit of clear motivations to put things into perspective.
Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Professor Lawrence Wetherhold (played by Dennis Quaid) teaches Victorian Literature at Carnegie Mellon University. Though he is very knowledgeable about the subject and has numerous publications to his name, Wetherhold is not well-liked by students or colleagues thanks to his arrogant and condescending demeanor. Indeed, he simply lectures students rather than engaging them in discussion, and doesn’t even bother to learn their names while they’re in his class.
Ostensibly, Wetherhold’s behavior is mostly the result of depression that set in following his wife’s death a few years before. He hasn’t recovered from that yet, hasn’t started dating again, and certainly hasn’t reconnected with his children — son James (Ashton Holmes), a freshman at CMU, and daughter Vanessa (Ellen Page), a high school senior whose top priority is getting a perfect score on the SAT.
After suffering a mild seizure one night, Wetherhold is brought to the ER where the attending physician, Dr. Hartigan (Sarah Jessica Parker), happens to be a former student of his. Dr. Hartigan admits to having a crush on Wetherhold when she was his student — at least until he gave her a lower than expected grade on an essay — but Wetherhold doesn’t remember her. Nevertheless, the two start dating. The results at first are disastrous, but for some reason, they stick with the relationship, and eventually develop it into a long-term deal.
The rest of the film then shows how Wetherhold’s relationship with Dr. Hartigan affects the family dynamic, which was already changing thanks to the sudden arrival of Uncle Chuck (Thomas Haden Church) to help out around the house while Wetherhold recuperated from the seizure.
My Reaction: Smart People was a very uneven film. At times, I thought it was funny and clever, but at others, the dialogue and situations felt forced, overly polished, and ultimately insincere. Moreover, none of the characters was particularly sympathetic, so I didn’t identify with them or care whether or not they achieved their goals. A successful film should engage its audience, but Smart People failed to do that for any sustained period of time.
The worst part of the movie for me — by far — was the relationship between Wetherhold and Dr. Hartigan. Why would a successful ER doctor even bother with a man so self-absorbed that he barely notices her presence during their first date? The script tries to explain this away by saying Hartigan had a crush on the man as a freshman in college, but I call B.S. on that. It’s highly unlikely that she would fall back into her freshman persona, complete with insecurities and all, just because she was in Wetherhold’s company again. I mean, he wasn’t some larger-than-life figure like a Nobel prize winner or a president; he was just a literature professor.
Besides the central relationship, the most annoying part of the movie was the Vanessa character. I’ve seen two Ellen Page movies, and she essentially played the same role in both. Granted, she wasn’t pregnant in this one, but she was still the wiser-than-her-years, wisecracking high school kid who knew more about what was going on than the adults. I seriously don’t understand all the fuss surrounding this actress. It seems that she doesn’t have a heck of a lot of range — at least in the two projects I’ve viewed.
Overall, Smart People suffers from a lack of clear direction, unarticulated character motives, and less than believable situations. It’s watchable, but at the end, you’re likely to end up scratching your head and asking what the point of the whole thing was. I give it 3 stars out of 5.
After listening to my friends sing the praises of NCIS for years, I finally started watching the show a few months ago. I’ve already gone through all of the first two seasons, and am currently 10 episodes into Season 3. And I have to say that this is probably my favorite show out of all the ones I regularly watch!
Private Practice 2×10 — “Worlds Apart”: I thought this episode was pretty good as a whole, but I ended up liking Addison’s storyline the least. I didn’t think the writers brought anything new to the table with the whole call girl thing. Almost every TV show that touches this subject presents it as glamorous and lucrative at first, only to turn into a nightmare once a bad john enters the picture. This is exactly what PP did, so what was the point? Also, I didn’t like that Addison just completely cut the patient off at the end. She went so far as to enable the young woman to receive medical care without having to reveal her real name, but then she had a change of heart after fighting with her boyfriend? Shouldn’t Addie at least have given the woman a referral to another OB/GYN or a psychiatrist?
Not being much of a science-fiction fan, Jumper wasn’t a movie that I was interested in seeing when it was released way back in February. I didn’t even bother checking out the DVD when that first became available — until I heard that Rachel Bilson was in the film. She was one of my favorite television actresses when she was on The O.C., and her name in the credits here was enough to get me to rent Jumper.
Last night’s episode of How I Met Your Mother was called “Little Minnesota”, and was one of the weakest efforts of the season, IMO. There were two funny parts, but everything else pretty much fell flat, making the ep seem to take a lot longer than the usual 30 minutes. I don’t know what’s going on with this show, but there have only been a few memorable episodes out of the first 11 of this season. I hope things change in the second half, because at this rate, the show, which faces the threat of cancellation every May, won’t retain enough viewers for CBS to justify bringing it back.
After spending two weeks at the top of the box office, the Reese Witherspoon-Vince Vaughn comedy Four Christmases finally got knocked down a peg to second place. The Day the Earth Stood Still, a sci-fi thriller starring Keanu Reeves, is the new champ after earning $31 million during its debut weekend. Four Christmases took in $13.3 million.
I gave up on CSI at the end of last season because I thought the show was moving past its prime. The year-long storylines were boring (I don’t care about Gil and Sarah’s relationship outside the office!), and the cases just felt repetitive — not surprising for a show that has been on for 9 years! And ever since the writers shifted the focus away from the science and put it squarely on the characters, CSI has become just like all the other procedural programs on television, even if it was the one that started the trend!
Even though I wouldn’t count Michael Connelly among my favorite authors, I have grown to appreciate his novels for what they are: lighthearted, entertaining reads that often tell a good story that doesn’t require too much brainpower to get through. In other words, I reach for these books when I want to turn my brain off for a while and read passively. That’s not meant to be a slight or a jab at the author’s abilities; that’s just how I feel about the books. The most recent one I read was Lost Light, published in 2003 as part of the Harry Bosch series, and it pretty much fell in line with what I expected.
House 5×11 — “Joy to the World”: This episode was quite different from what we usually get with House, but I kind of liked it. My opinion may change upon a second viewing, but for now, I’m okay with what I saw. No, not the Foreman/Thirteen pairing (which has already been dubbed “Foreteen” by fans), but most of the other stuff was decent.