Professor Lawrence Wetherhold might be imperiously brilliant, monumentally self-possessed and an intellectual giant--but when it comes to solving the conundrums of love and family, he's as downright flummoxed as the next guy. His collegiate son won't confide in him, his teenaged daughter is an acid-tongued overachiever who follows all too closely in dad's misery-loving footsteps, and his adopted, preposterously ne'er-do-well brother has perfected the art of freeloading. A widower who can't seem to find passion in anything anymore, not even the Victorian Literature in which he's an expert, it seems Lawrence is sleepwalking through a very stunted middle age. When his brother shows up unexpectedly for an extended stay at just about the same time as he accidentally encounters his former student Janet, the circumstances cause him to stir from his deep, deep freeze, with consequences for himself and everyone around him.

I wonder if the film knows how ironic its title is as it makes a big point of pointing out how despite how smart its characters are there intelligence makes them dumb in many other aspects of life all the while the movie does the same for its audience. By trying to be so smart and by trying to tell a story in a different way the movie become dull and emotionless. The movie takes on its characters emotionless melancholy attitude and transfers it to the film as a whole. It’s hard to feel any kind of apathy or caring for characters that are so lifeless, that are so dull that they become boring. Every point the movie was trying to make about how smart people with all their intelligence are still just flawed humans is funny because despite how smart the movie thinks it is and how original the writers must have thought their story was the movie is flawed beyond repair just like its characters.

The movie is also supposed to be a romance comedy, a romance between too intelligent but emotionally distant people who are trying to cope with that distance and each other. But the number one thing that is important for any kind of romance to feel realistic and to draw you in is chemistry. And Sarah Jessica Parker and Dennis Quaid have zero chemistry; they feel like two strangers meeting on a street corner rather then a pair of people who are supposed to have had intimate relations with each other. There romance is dull and emotionless like their characters, like the rest of the movie. They are boring, their characters are boring, the story is boring, their romance is boring and the movie is boring.

The last intertwined story that makes up the movie is the relationship between Dennis Quaid and his daughter Ellen Page. This was probably the best and most interesting part of the movie as her character seems to have a little life even if she is obsessed with getting the perfect SAT score and seems as unrealistic as the rest of the characters in the movie. But the interaction between her and her father as well as Parker's suitor girlfriend actually gives the movie a little life and makes it a little less dull but there was no saving grace for this lifeless mess of a movie.

I am not a fan of Sarah Jessica Parker as I have yet to see her in anything where she proved she is a good actor or should be getting leading roles in romantic films. She reminds me of Barbara Streisand when she was pulling down these kind of roles in the 1960's and 70's. A kind of homely woman with very or little acting ability that seems to get role after role after role despite having all those strikes against her. And Dennis Quaid can do so much better for himself than this psuedo intellectual clunker but then again he was a big reason the movie was so dull and boring. He gives a terrible performance but then again the writing seemed to ask and beg for such a lifeless character so maybe he pulls it off a to a T. The movie is a dull, lifeless, boring clunker that your supposed to go wow they are so smart and original but in all reality they are not they just think they are.

Grade: D