An injured professor (Dennis Quaid) learns that his doctor (Sarah Jessica Parker) is a former student in "Smart People." (Photo provided by Miramax Films)

'Smart People" isn't as smart as it thinks it is, despite some wickedly snappy dialogue. Novelist-turned-screenwriter Mark Poirier gives the capable, eclectic cast some zingers to play with, but he loads his script with plot contrivances that are too hard to accept.

Dennis Quaid plays against type as acerbic, self-absorbed English professor Lawrence Wetherhold, infamous for forgetting the names of his students at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

A head injury lands him in the hospital, where the chief emergency room doctor, Janet Hartigan (Sarah Jessica Parker), happens to be a former student who once had a crush on him. Naturally, he doesn't remember her, either.

At the same time, his scam-artist adopted brother, Chuck (Thomas Haden Church), shows up and moves in with Lawrence and his teenage daughter, Vanessa (Ellen Page), a Young Republican obsessed with getting into Stanford. Lawrence's son, a Carnegie Mellon student (Ashton Holmes), lives in the dorms and has little to do.

Longtime commercial director Noam Murro keeps things moving at a decent clip in his feature debut, but it's hard to shake the feeling that you've seen this kind of indie dysfunctional-family comedy countless times before. All these figures will clearly shape Lawrence for the better, but not without some major resistance from this rumpled, middle-aged blowhard. And they're all viciously verbal, so they're up for the challenge of sparring with him -- and each other. Chuck urges Lawrence to go out with Janet -- and more: "You spend $50 on dinner, that's grounds for intercourse."

He also inspires some stirrings in the uptight Vanessa, getting her high and drunk when she should be studying. Even though the character is far more conservative than Juno MacGuff, the role that made Page an instant star, they're similar in terms of quick-witted temperament and deadpan delivery

But the person who has the most influence on him, ostensibly, is Janet -- though it's hard to believe they'd ever get together. The age difference, about a decade, isn't the problem. They have no chemistry, and Lawrence doesn't appear to have the vaguest glimmer of humanity or potential for redemption, so you'll question what she sees in him.

Parker certainly has strong enough comic timing that she's comfortable bantering with Quaid; they just seem like an ill fit for each other.

-By Christy Lemire / Associated Press