Smart people, apparently, are not that smart. At least, that’s what the creators of Smart People seem to think. Sure, they can get high scores on the SAT or instantly recall the definitions of obscure words, but when it comes to figuring out how to live life, these people have a hard time. Naturally, the result is chaos and family dysfunction.

Lawrence Wetherhold (Dennis Quaid) is a widowed lit professor whose life is slowly unraveling. His students hate him because he’s a self-absorbed jerk who grades too hard and he and his son barely communicate. His precocious daughter, Vanessa (Ellen Page), is turning into him, making sure everyone is aware of how smart she is. To top it off, his ne’er-do-well adopted brother, Chuck (Thomas Haden Church), has arrived in town and invited himself to stay in Lawrence’s house. Of course, the nice thing about movies is that once people’s lives start unraveling, there’s usually some sort of love interest who enters the picture and makes everything better. In this movie, the love interest comes in the form of Janet (Sarah Jessica Parker), Lawrence’s former student.

Although the premise is nice, Smart People is missing something. The characters, while complex, aren’t very engaging. Dennis Quaid makes a nice effort to play a very unlikable character. The problem is, it’s obvious that he’s making an effort. Ellen Page is good, but she’s basically playing Juno’s evil twin. Sarah Jessica Parker’s Janet is a decent, down-to-earth character but, unfortunately, her storyline gets bogged down by the fact that we’re never quite sure what she’s doing with Lawrence. She tells him that he’s a pompous jerk, and she doesn’t seem to like him, yet she starts a relationship with him.

The bright spot of the movie is Thomas Haden Church’s Chuck, who makes for a compelling lovable loser. In a movie about smart people, he’s supposed to be the relatively dumb one. Apparently, smart people just aren’t that interesting.