"Smart People"
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Professor Lawrence Wetherhold (Dennis Quaid) might be imperiously brilliant, monumentally
self-possessed and an intellectual giant -- but when it comes to solving the conundrums of
love and family, he's as downright flummoxed as the next guy.
His teenaged daughter (Ellen Page)
is an acid-tongued overachiever who follows all too closely in dad's misery-loving footsteps,
and his adopted, preposterously ne'er-do-well brother (Thomas Haden Chuch) has perfected the art
of freeloading. A widower who can't seem to find passion in anything anymore, not even the
Victorian Literature in which he's an expert, it seems Lawrence is sleepwalking through a very
stunted middle age.
When his brother shows up unexpectedly for an extended stay at just about
the same time as he accidentally encounters his former student Janet (Sarah Jessica Parker),
the circumstances cause him to stir from his deep, deep freeze, with often comical, sometimes
heartbreaking, consequences for himself and everyone around him.