Smart People.

"While Smart People boasts Sundance credentials and a hip cast of actors, its treacly life lessons, tame 'edginess' and smothering tenderheartedness makes it feel like a big-screen version of Family Ties," writes Alonso Duralde for MSNBC. "All that's missing are Tina Yothers and some Maxwell House commercials."

"Smart People is a borderline-excruciating exercise in trying to replicate the eccentric charm of Little Miss Sunshine, pulling its nasty punches... in order to make room for third-act uplift, and defining its protagonists through idiosyncratic (and metaphorical) habits and hang-ups that reek of screenwriting affectation," writes Nick Schager in Slant.

Updated through 4/14.

"It's almost impossible to bear the film ill will, as it makes a case for compassion and tries awfully hard to be awfully sweet," writes Robert Wilonsky in the Voice. "But then what? Written by first-timer Mark Poirier, it's all action without any meaning, a beginner's-class screenplay populated by archetypes - the wise-beyond-her-years teen, the hardboiled widower, the reckless and feckless half-sibling, the nice lady who rescues the dick from himself - who just do things till they run out of unhappiness, the end."

Terence Rafferty talks with Poirier, who'd written a collection of short stories, Naked Pueblo, and a novel, Goats, before deciding to turn the idea for his next novel into a screenplay.

For AICN, Capone talks with Thomas Haden Church.

Earlier: Reviews from Sundance.

Updates, 4/11: "There is something about impersonating thwarted intellectuals, their early promise and ambition fading into vanity and irrelevance, that inspires a certain kind of actor to tap into deep veins of pathos and wit," writes AO Scott in the New York Times. "Jeff Daniels struck the modern template for this kind of performance in The Squid and the Whale, and in their different ways [Richard] Jenkins [in The Visitor] and [Dennis] Quaid live up to his high standard."

"[T]he constant tone of surly sarcasm with which the smart people in Smart People keep the world at bay finally begins to grate," writes Ann Hornaday in the Washington Post. "When the film reaches its happy ending, is it because it's genuinely happy or just ending?"

"Smart People is the kind of small, cranky family and/or friendship comedy that has been busting out since Sideways, often exceeding expectations, occasionally inspiring a backlash, and sometimes not," writes Carina Chocano in the Los Angeles Times. "It's the kind of observational comedy, that'll be hard to find come summertime and should be enjoyed while there's still a chance."

"There's not a minute in the picture where we're not reminded, either by a too-polished line of dialogue or a precociously unstudied camera angle, that this is a movie for an intelligent, sophisticated audience, an audience who just naturally gets it," writes Salon's Stephanie Zacharek. "Smart People is so preoccupied with congratulating us for getting it that it fails to give us much to get in the first place, even though it features a respectable ensemble of actors... squeezing as hard as they can to wring some life from the material."

"Come for the popular Ellen Page and the punchy Sarah Jessica Parker, but stay for the scene-stealing Dennis Quaid," advises S James Snyder in the New York Sun.

"So why should audiences care whether this undeserving schlub finds happiness?" asks Tasha Robinson at the AV Club. "Good question, and one first-time screenwriter Mark Jude Poirier and first-time director Noam Murro never fully answer."

"Quaid is a downright lovable jerk; Ellen Page plays Juno again, exquisitely - but novelist Mark Jude Poirier's writing turns sharp, surprising corners, and Noam Murro's direction is patient, giving the material plenty of room to sprout out of its ruts," writes the Stranger's Annie Wagner.

"Smart People is fairly intelligent, mildly amusing and clinically depressed," writes Jim Emerson at RogerEbert.com. "If you put it next to brilliant pictures about emotionally stymied writers/academics, like The Squid and the Whale, Wonder Boys or The Accidental Tourist, it looks a bit dull, like the dour professor who never removes his tweed jacket - the one with the leather elbow patches."

"The point of Smart People is to return its anti-hero to something like civility, which is not exactly a startlingly original comic notion," writes Richard Schickel in Time. "That said, its pretty conventional characters are often pretty funny. Or maybe I should say, surprisingly interesting."

"Ostensibly a seriocomic tale about coping with loss and finding a balance between ambition and decency, Smart People is, for the most part, a sour and thoughtless bore," writes the New Republic's Christopher Orr.

Nathaniel R's "whipped up" a Scrabble board.

"Too bad the movie's central relationship, the prickly courtship between Wetherhold and his doctor girlfriend, never finds its momentum," writes Slate's Dana Stevens. "Quaid and Sarah Jessica Parker, both terrific, aren't to blame. The problem is that their relationship proceeds according to the As Good as It Gets law, which dictates that angry, paunchy, deeply disturbed old men in the movies need only to dial down their unpleasantness by 5 percent to win the affection of smart, kind, beautiful young women."

"An accumulation of meaningless family squabbles sutured together by what must be the most overwrought, intrusive score ever, Smart People should have hired a few," writes Ryan Stewart for Premiere.

Update, 4/12: "It's About Schmidt meets The Squid and the Whale with a Sideways twist," writes Chuck Tryon.

Updates, 4/14: "I had an odd sensation (I've had it at other movies like this) that Murro was eager to remain calmly and quietly at the level of observation as long as he could, that he wanted to avoid conventional movieness - powerful emotions and the vulgarity of a dramatic climax," writes David Denby in the New Yorker. "But a movie can't end, as a good short story might, with a mere pinprick of insight."

For New York's David Edelstein, Smart People is "of interest chiefly for the first post-Juno role of Ellen Page.... Will she prove talented enough—like, say, Katharine Hepburn - to transcend her mannerisms?"

Posted by dwhudson at April 9, 2008 12:13 PM