Perhaps because Hollywood can always be relied on for false uplift and pervasively happy endings, independent films frequently seem to dwell on the lives of dark, tortured souls and their equally dark and tortured lives. Once in a while an indie comes along that seems to blend the best of both worlds — troubled lives that somehow find a way out of their morass and into the light of redemption. Such is Smart People.

Smart People is the darkly comic story of Lawrence Wetherhold (Dennis Quaid), a caustic, egocentric, grouchy literature professor who has alienated his college-aged son and turned his teenaged daughter Vanessa (Juno’s Ellen Page) into an overachieving, friendless clone. After an injury prevents him from being able to drive, the widowed Lawrence grudgingly agrees to let his strapped-for-cash, good-for-nothing, adopted (as Lawrence is sure to always mention) brother, Chuck (Thomas Hayden Church) move in and take care of him.

It isn’t long before Charles Dickens’ “Bleak House,” a Victorian novel about which Lawrence loves to lecture, becomes the very definition of his home life. His only bright spot is Janet (Sarah Jessica Parker), a former student who is now the doctor overseeing his recovery. Will the pompous curmudgeon embrace the anarchy his life has become long enough to let it break his hardened shell, or will he continue to substitute cold, sterile intellectualism for real, human connection?

Don’t be surprised if you walk out of Smart People thinking about Noah Baumbach’s dark and difficult, The Squid and the Whale, or more specifically, the Oscar-winning indie Sideways. The films share more than just a producer. Though their plotlines are unique, the characters (and even some of the actors, notably Church’s giant toddler) are remarkably similar — hyper-intellectual and learned men whose accomplishments cannot hide pathetic lives devoid of legitimate relationships. The devastating events that appear as catastrophes are instead the very catalysts of salvation.

Going into it, you’d never know that the enjoyable and accomplished, if a tad bit predictable, Smart People is a collaboration between a first-time director and a first-time screenwriter. Norm Murro and novelist Mark Jude Poirier manage to find just the right balance of pathos and the pathetic, somberness and stupidity.

Smart People could have done with a bit more story, not less. Lawrence and Janet’s relationship isn’t completely believable; what in the world does this accomplished doctor see in the arrogant, contemptuous professor she once had a schoolgirl crush on? The more interesting relationship is that of the corrupting Chuck and the uptight Vanessa, as the uncle’s wholly reasonable desire to slow his niece’s accelerated maturation (with pot and beer, no less) is grossly mistaken. That said, the film resolves its various storylines in elegant epiphanies worthy of the overall material.

The idiosyncratic cast hits all the right notes. The always-terrific Dennis Quaid hides his handsomeness behind a thick beard, slovenly clothes, a shuffling gate and a protruding gut. His recent Hollywood comeback does the heart good. Ellen Page gives yet another terrific performance, this time as a girl who possesses all of Juno’s laser wit but none of her slapdash personality.

The older you get the more you realize that every family, even, or perhaps especially, your own, is wildly dysfunctional. Rather than tilt at domestic windmills, it’s better to accept that a bit of messiness is often just the thing to lure happiness.

© Copyright 2008 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.