‘Smart People’ aren’t always

Now that we’ve gotten contest time out of the way, let’s talk movies. Namely, the new Dennis Quaid movie “Smart People.”

I sometimes wonder how these little movies, which are the kinds of films that show up endlessly on film-festival schedules, ever get big-screen releases. Or, when they do show in theaters, how they end up playing in Michael Bay kinds of town – Spokane, say.

“Smart People,” whose director Noam Murro is known mostly for having directed commercials, is all about redemption. Redeeming the life and career of the protagonist, pompous college English professor Lawrence Wetherhold (Quaid). Redeeming the professor’s relationship with his children, James ( Ashton Holmes ) and Vanessa (Ellen Page of “Juno” fame), and with his adopted brother Chuck ( Thomas Haden Church ).

And redeeming the professor’s love life, an opportunity that comes courtesy of an emergency-room doctor named Janet (Sarah Jessica Parker) who once earned a grade of C from him.

The film’s problem isn’t that all these characters wear their flaws like college hoodies. Flaws are what make any character interesting. It’s just that the flaws are so ingrained that, from the first, it seems doubtful that any reasonable change, or resolution, is likely to come in a 95-minute running time.

Especially when that fuel for that change involves pregnancy, one of the oldest plot points known to cinema that seems to be enjoying – if that’s the right word – a revival in popularity. Think “Juno.” Think “Knocked Up.” Think of the forthcoming “Baby Mamma” and “Then She Found Me.”

The joy of “Smart People” is the acting. Haden Church can imbue any line of dialogue with layers of meaning. Page shows that she can do more than play a 16-year-old girl with a fatal case of precociousness. Quaid is appropriately rumpled, and Jessica Parker is (equally) appropriately downbeat.

The acting is likely what allowed the film to graduate from the festival circuit. Or what saved it from a straight-to-DVD fate.

I’ll be shocked, though, if it plays more than a week in our fair Lilac City.

Below: Sarah Jessica Parker and Ellen Page looked radiant at the March 31 premiere of the film “Smart People” in New York.

Associated Press photo