Director : Noam Murro (Noam Murro)
Actors : Dennis Quaid, Sarah Jessica Parker, Thomas Haden Church, Ellen Page,
Country : USA
Year : 2008
Duration : 95 minutes.
A highly educated and overly arrogant professor of literature at Georgetown University suddenly discovers that he does not devote time to his children and is too concerned about his work. For him, too, the discovery that his students hate him silently, and there is practically no chance that he will be elected dean. But everything changes when he falls in love with his former student, now a doctor of literature.
Slow, calm, a little fairy movie about people with a high IQ. Dennis Quaid, Sarah Jessica Parker, Ellen Page, Thomas Hayden Church and 95 pleasantly past minutes. So, gentlemen: the best film of the week. To look all. A film that does not stand on the action of non-stop and not on special effects. The film that the actors did - you must admit, it's such a rarity today!
Dennis Quaid - "My enemy", "Radio wave", "Heart of a dragon", "The day after tomorrow" - very organic in the role of shaggy and wrinkled clever professor. He does not remember the names of his students (he, in the past, also a student, is not at all surprised), he despises the world and is very concerned about a) the publication of his book and b) the election of the head of the department. He does not notice how his children grow up, taking for granted the care of his daughter and the indifference of his son.
Ellen Page again plays a girl too smart for the world around her. But in "Juneau" she was smart, because she understood some things better than adults. Here she is intelligent, because she studies a lot and lives a little.
Sarah Jessica Parker, who moved away from the usual role of the icon of the sexy style "a little after thirty" and finally played the same as herself: an intelligent, thin, reserved and sensitive woman. It is not remembered in what she was dress and how she laid her hair. It is remembered how she leaves, with her shoulders slightly lowered.
Thomas Hayden Church - he somehow is removed, and if removed, it is mostly in episodes ... Well, perhaps Sandman (the third "Spiderman") can be recalled. Yes, perhaps, also "On the Roadside" - a film made by almost the same team of producers and promoters as "Clever".
Professor Lawrence teaches literature at the university, his extraordinarily clever and overly pragmatic daughter, Vanessa, lives for the benefit of the family and society (she does not have a personal life) and tries to enroll in Stanford, the son writes poems and meets violently with the Asian. Lawrence's wife and the mother of his complex children have long since died, he himself hates the world and the surrounding lack of talent (students).
Ineptitude answers him the same. What is most sad, it seems, the same is answered by his own children, who certainly can not be called mediocrities. The professor has a stepbrother who performs the function of a lousy sheep in the family and a book that they do not want to publish because of her extreme boredom. One day the professor will meet the doctor - almost as much as himself. And they will try to build something that looks like normal human relationships.
And who said that "Clever" is a comedy?
Natalia Rudenko