Smartly done

Last week when I was on vacation Ralph and I did something we rarely do...
Now get your mind out of the gutter!

We went to the movies. We received a gift certificate for Christmas, and finally got around to going to the theater.
The last time we went I think we saw "Shrek 2." It has been a while.

We saw "Smart People." We are so delayed pop-culturally speaking that neither of us knew who the actor was who played the main character. Turned out it was that "unknown" actor Dennis Quaid. He's new on the scene right? Oh. Maybe not.

Well, we sat back, munched free popcorn and enjoyed thinking about something other than bills and problems. That's what it means to be entertained, right?
It's a wonderful concept.

The movie: It is about a professor of Victorian literature at Carnegie Mellon (Quaid) who is a widower. He is out of touch with his two children, a son who attends Carnegie Mellon for free, since Dad teaches there, and a daughter who is a senior in high school. She is borderline brilliant but emotionally needy.
She holds down the fort at home, making dinner for Dad and taking care of the laundry and the house. Daughter gets accepted into Stanford, but doesn't tell Dad.

He is so wrapped up in his own problems he seems oblivious to the two people he should be most devoted, his son and daughter. An adopted brother (played by Thomas Haden Church) lends comic relief to this rather morose, overly-intellectual household.

Quaid gets injured trying to retrieve his car from the impound and is taken to the hospital. Enter cute former student who he doesn't remember and now emergency room physician Sarah Jessica Parker.
They have some on-screen chemistry, as it were. Eventually, as you might imagine, sparks fly.

This is a movie that is easy to take, and rather smartly done. Quaid plays a curmudgeonly sort, an intellectual vying for the chairmanship of the English department. His character is self-centered, but by the end of the movie he comes around to being human again. You'll feel good walking out of the theater.

Out of five stars? I'd give it three. * * *