Here we have a film that could have been far better than it actually was. Average is the best way to describe it, but it is nice to see Dennis Quaid in a role once again not relying on him scowling at the camera like an angry Neanderthal. Quaid is actually a good actor when he isn't playing the tough guy and even though he plays a disgruntled widower in Smart People he manages to keep the sour puss stares in check and actually do a little acting.

Smart People centers on the college English professor Lawrence Wetherhold (Quaid) a man who lost his wife three years prior and has become something of a pompous ass. He treats his students as morons and goes about his predictable day-to-day activities with hardly a care in the world as he tries to peddle his egotistical book on publishing houses. He lives at home with his 16-year-old daughter Vanessa played by Ellen Page who is once again playing a 40-year-old woman trapped in a young girl's body. Page has basically been typecast into such a character that always comes off as something of a smarty pants wise beyond her years and it is really becoming a bit tired. Lawrence's son James is played by Ashton Holmes, who made something of a name for himself in A History of Violence, goes to school at the same college his father teaches at and is living in the dorms there. Along with his daughter, also crashing with Lawrence is his adopted brother Chuck played by Thomas Haden Church, another actor who seems to have been typecast. In Church's case he is oftentimes playing something of a half-wit, but at least there are a couple of layers to his character here.

The storyline follows Lawrence getting out of the funk he is in, getting over his dead wife and moving forward with something of a love life with a former student played by Sarah Jessica Parker. The best way to describe the film is to say that its dysfunction is the function turning the wheels of the story. We have seen stories like this before and this one is no different in its structure.

Lawrence tries to start a relationship only to see his personality get in the way, but the relationship finds ways around it only to have his personality come into play once again. It is this redundant piece of the story that actually weakens the hour that came before it. The script feels as if they had an idea of where they were going to go, but just couldn't figure out how to fill the 15 minutes leading up to the film's ending and were forced to go the unoriginal route. No worries though, there wasn't much originality here in the first place.

The best parts of the film revolve around Chuck as Haden Church is allowed to play him as something of an idiot hanger-on because that is how he is treated. However, throughout the film Chuck has more of an epiphany than his brother Lawrence even though I don't think that was director Noam Murro's intention, nor was it the goal of writer Mark Poiner. These two have a commentary track on this disc, even though this is a film that doesn't need or even ask for a commentary. I decided to give it a shot for only one reason and jumped to the redundant scene I mentioned earlier only to find they had nothing to say about it. This only proved to me that they didn't even see the actual problem with their film. Instead of talking about the bothersome scene in the airport they decided to talk about how the audio of the film was in their right ear while they heard their commentary in their left ear. Really enlightening stuff fellas.

Other than that there are some deleted scenes, a gag reel and a making of featurette. None of which I had any interest in watching because I just didn't care what was cut out or how the film was made. It isn't as if knowing what Ellen Page thought about her character is going to do anything for me and this film isn't complicated enough to warrant further dissection.

Smart People is an average indie and it's too bad because Dennis Quaid doesn't manage to find roles like this often. He found something similar in the 2004 flick In Good Company, a film that was better than this one, but it seems he is destined to play the scowling mad man in half-rate action flicks as there are obviously better choices for these kinds of roles when it comes to major films of its ilk. Sorry Dennis, it's the truth.