Smart People review

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From The Squid And The Whale to Wonder Boys and good-period Woody Allen (Manhattan et al), ad-man Noam Murro’s feature bow flaunts impeccable taste in influences. Shame it doesn’t channel them into a tighter, spikier showcase for its eye-snagging ensemble. Dennis Quaid plays gamely against his usual type as a beardy, grinchy English-lit professor, but for all his woes (unpublishable, widowed, dating a blank Sarah Jessica Parker), the character’s still a watery echo of Squid’s Jeff Daniels. Meanwhile, the really cool kids are pigeonholed in restricted roles: Ellen Page as Quaid’s poison-tongued daughter and Thomas Haden Church as his loveable screw-up of an adoptive brother. The diminishing returns of the latter’s comic bum-baring epitomise the cracks in a film that darkly targets family dysfunction and airless academia but barely manages to bruise either.

The Total Film team are made up of the finest minds in all of film journalism. They are: Editor Jane Crowther, Deputy Editor Matt Maytum, Reviews Ed Matthew Leyland, News Editor Jordan Farley, and Online Editor Emily Murray. Expect exclusive news, reviews, features, and more from the team behind the smarter movie magazine.