Professor Wetherhold has spent his life ridiculing his students and dangling his obscure knowledge, which he mistakes for intellect above them, rather than doing his job and actually teaching them. Years later, he tries to date a doctor, who had earlier dropped out of his class, after he crapped all over her paper. His son hates him, and his daughter seems to have picked up all of his nasty, elitist, misanthropic habits. A move-in by his ne’er-do-well brother may be just the thing he needs to set things right with his family. Or maybe he just needs a good smack upside his head. Smart People might have more accurately been called "Stupid Miserable Nerds Who Think They're Better than Other People Because of Stupid, Obscure, Arcane Words that They Know.”
Did I miss something here? I don’t even know how to classify this film. It’s not really funny enough to be a comedy, and it’s too stupid to be a drama. There’s an awkward kind of writing going on in this film – the kind of writing you tend to see in creative writing classes where students try to write characters that are more intelligent than themselves. One of the basic tenets of writing is to write what you know, and I got the distinct impression that the writer didn’t really understand his own material.
Not a terrific movie, but not terrible either. It’s a little awkward, but the story is fine, and the acting is good. The story isn’t very clever or original, so I was a bit disappointed, but then again, what the heck was I expecting? Apparently more. You know what I was expecting? Wit. The title and marketing of the film, and particularly having intellectuals as the main characters, particularly in a comedy, would suggest the film would have wit, which the film sorely lacks. 3 stars
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