The first time Dennis Quaid's moody professor stumbles over the names of his students; you know exactly how this guy is going to end up - and sadly how this film is going to finish.

Smart People’s styled indie flick of a self-deprecating family is a latecomer to a crowded arena of similar films. The tragic home, cursed without perspective and heaps of denial is a familiar sound to cinematic ears. If The Royal Tenenbaums and Little Miss Sunshine have proved, dysfunctional families can indeed be an endless source of creativity for modern cinema.
           
The boundaries of Smart People however, rarely extend beyond the average. Everything from the stock characters of tragicomedy, the slack-but-wise uncle, rebellious intellectual teenager and frustrated son are all here but none of them excel beyond the comfortable, if unremarkable bounds of its story.

Quaid’s mid-life crisis serves as the axis for the families’ general unease, introduce Thomas Haden Church’s incompetent but philosophical uncle and you have a set piece ripe for potential. But whilst the performances are superb, the characters are left with little to wrestle with throughout the films running time. Even Sarah Jessica Parker as the inevitable love interest fails to light things up or provide convincing enough romance to feel empathy for him.

It ambles along at a slow speed, with the occasional spark of genius from Ellen Page and Haden Church, but even these struggle to prop up a story that has been done so many times before, to much better effect.

All the components are here for a funny, touching and - dare I say it - smart film, but instead first time director Noam Murro seems content inside the borders of the ordinary.