SmartPeople, Blu-ray (2008)

by | Aug 7, 2008 | DVD & Blu-ray Video Reviews | 0 comments

SmartPeople, Blu-ray (2008)

Starring: Dennis Quaid, Sarah Jessica Parker, Ellen Page, Thomas Haden Church
Studio: Groundswell/Miramax 056512 [Release date: Aug. 12, 2008]
Video: 2.40:1 anamorphic/enhanced for 16:9, 1080p HD
Audio: English uncompressed 5.1 PCM (48K/24bit), English DD 5.1
Subtitles: English SDH, French, Spanish
Extras: Deleted scenes, The Smartest People – Interviews with the filmmakers and cast, Not So Smart – Bloopers & outtakes, Commentary by filmmaker Noam Murro & Writer Mark Jude Poirier
Length: 95 minutes
Rating: ****

Coming from the producer of the wonderfully quirky Sideways, a lot was expected of this new effort.  It didn’t quite come together but is still an enjoyable view of some likeable but dysfunctional people.  (One reviewer summed it up as Could Be Smarter.) Quaid plays Lawrence – the widowed and self-centered English professor at a university in Pittsburg. He doesn’t relate well at all to his students, and talks in his classes about rarified aspects of literature that are way over the heads of any relevancy to his young charges. His career seems to be at a standstill until he finally gets a book published – then things begin to change for him. It illustrates the “publish or perish” mentality in such institutions. And also the often-found disinterest in giving students a good general education in the humanities.

His home life is odd, to say the least: his teenage son and daughter are constantly arguing, and after he has an unusual seizure he is barred from driving for a month and is forced to let his layabout adopted brother move in and act as his chauffeur. His daughter (Page) is highly intelligent, highly ascerbic, and a staunch Republican activist.  She takes a strong liking to the brother. (By the way, she was the “blessed” young lady in Juno.)  Lawrence takes a liking to the doctor who originally treated him –  she turns out to be one of his former students to whom he gave a C on a paper. The comedy of everyone’s struggles is fairly well-done though slow-paced.  And there’s some great lines. One of the attractions of the film is that all the characters seem to be real people – not Hollywood actors; the same was true of Sideways. In the end Lawrence appears to have learned to come out of his self-absorbed shell and to be more of a human.

The transfer is without any flaws that I could see, and although the surround isn’t a major feature of this film, the uncompressed soundtrack seemed more transparent and realistic than any of the lossless codecs on other Blu-rays.

 – John Sunier

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