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Time Out says

Bearing a ‘From the Producer of “Sideways’’’ poster credit on its back, Noam Murro’s haughty, self-consciously erudite, Sundance-stained comedy shows there are few more annoying traits in cinema than clever people done badly. Dennis Quaid struggles to convince as a Midwestern professor out to bag a publishing deal for his swollen tome of confrontational critical theory. His vacant emotional incubus of a daughter, Ellen Page has to secure a place at an Ivy League university while fending off Sarah Jessica Parker’s amorous advances towards her emotionally crippled pops.

Though the film makes the all-too-hamfisted point that book smarts and people smarts are different kettles of oily fish, you don’t for one minute believe – as you do with ‘Sideways’ and ‘The Squid and the Whale’ – that any of these characters demonstrate genuine intelligence beyond smug eyebrow raising, pointless rhetorical quips and nasty grammar fascism. And it’s slathered in an awful soundtrack of coffee-table acoustica that makes Sheryl Crow sound as heavy as Motörhead.
Written by David Jenkins

Release Details

  • Rated:15
  • Release date:Friday 16 May 2008
  • Duration:95 mins

Cast and crew

  • Director:Noam Murro
  • Screenwriter:Mark Poirier
  • Cast:
    • Dennis Quaid
    • Sarah Jessica Parker
    • Thomas Haden Church
    • Ellen Page
    • Ashton Holmes
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