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Dennis Quaid

Smart People – Review

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WARNING: Spoiler Review! If you haven’t seen this movie and plan on it, you’ve been warned.

I went to see the movie Smart People last night. Dennis Quaid stars as Lawrence Wetherhold, widowed, a self-centered, slightly arrogant English professor at Carnegie Mellon University. After jumping a fence at a university impoundment lot to get a briefcase out of his car, he injures himself and ends up in the hospital. There he meets a former student of his, played by Sarah Jessica Parker.

After a few awkward incidents, he finally asks her out on a date. He proceeds to drive her away on their first date, though, after talking about a book he’s writing for forty-five minutes without letting her get a single word in. He then goes back to the ER to ask her for one more chance, and the second date goes much better.

He ends up finding a publisher for his new book and decides to bring her along to New York City for the meeting. She ends up getting pregnant and tries to tell him, but he’s being too arrogant and unapproachable to notice. They end up together and relatively happy in the end, though.

Ellen Page, star of last year’s hugely successful film Juno, plays Quaid’s daughter and provides comic relief, along with Thomas Haden Church, who plays his adopted, sedentary, do-nothing brother. They do little more than lighten the mood, though. Their characters both remain very stagnant and have hardly any dimension to them throughout the duration of the film.

If you like movies such as The Family Stone, you’ll probably enjoy this film, but will probably also notice the lack of a dynamic story line or character development. Overall, though, I really didn’t think it was a bad film at all.

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Vantage Point – Review

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WARNING: Spoiler Review! If you haven’t seen this movie and plan on it, you’ve been warned.

I’m finally catching up on reviewing all the movies I’ve seen over the past few months. The first I wanted to review is Vantage Point. Dennis Quaid gives a great performance as an FBI agent sent to protect the president at a speaking engagement in Spain. The president is shot, and the story is told from the vantage point of eight different people.

While it was an interesting idea, the movie felt a lot like the movie Groundhog Day, where the same day is played out over and over again. This sort of monotony took the drama out of the movie if you ask me. But still, it was rather interesting. The final vantage point, after seeing some from people in the crowd, FBI agents, etc., is that of the president.

The twist is that you see in the end that it was actually his body double that got shot because his aides heard about the threat of violence before the arrived. Overall, not a bad movie, but I’ve also seen a lot better.

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