That wicked grin, which ripples slowly but finishes like a supernova, might be the reason Dennis Quaid emerged from the relatively lame cinematic decade of the 1980's unscathed. Though he's been working nonstop for the last 30 years, the vastly underappreciated Quaid didn't seem to hit his critical stride until the 21st century, with the one-two-three punch of Steven Soderbergh's "Traffic," Disney's "The Rookie" (a total guilty pleasure), and "Far From Heaven," in which Quaid played a closeted 50's husband, and for which he was wrongly denied any Oscar love.

But in the joyless and smug "Smart People," Quaid can't fall back on his Klieg-light smile to star as crabby English professor Lawrence Wetherhold. Instead he slouches his shoulders, rejects personal grooming, and possibly shoves a handful of woozy kittens down his sweater vests to badly approximate a belly gone to pot. Clad in the earth-toned rumple of a middle-aged academic, the widowed Lawrence presides over a family that includes overachieving daughter Vanessa (monotonic Ellen Page, a/k/a "Juno"), a truly forgettable son, and adopted brother Chuck (the invaluable Thomas Haden Church), an overgrown slacker who moves in to drive Lawrence around following plot-induced head trauma.

Sarah Jessica Parker plays the thankless role of Janet, Lawrence's former student but now a lonely doctor who re-activates her college fantasy when she begins dating the cluelessly pompous Lawrence. The problem is that there really isn't any spark between Quaid and Parker, which makes their trite push-pull seem more desperate than passionate. But them's the romantic-comedy rules, though following through on the wholly inappropriate charge between Chuck and Vanessa would have been in keeping with the sarcastic indie guidelines. The most interesting thread of the film watches as Chuck anesthetizes the Stanford-bound Young Republican with beer and weed so it won't hurt when he removes the stick from her ass.

Which reminds me: mocking the Grand Old Party has become obvious and downright lazy -- let's all knowingly smirk at Vanessa's Reagan photo! - and if Vanessa's belief system were religious (Muslim, say?) rather than right-wing, that condescending scorn isn't something a screenwriter would dare attempt. It's one of the many clichés, however, that first-time scribe Mark Poirier perpetrates, the most notable infraction being Janet's third-act jam, which affixes a pretty bow to our uninspired package and saves Poirier from fleshing out anything honest.

There's nothing particularly warm or funny about "Smart People," and it's almost a shame that Quaid is so good as Lawrence, a sad misanthrope whose inflated sense of entitlement provides a cushion against a world that he doesn't feel is up to his standards. Jeff Daniels successfully tried the same thing in "The Squid and the Whale," but that film didn't rest squarely on Daniels' shoulders. Intelligent individuals who don't (can't? won't?) use their brains elicit very little sympathy from us plebes anyway, and engaging an audience with a distasteful lead is tough even for a veteran scenarist. What's imperative is character development that indicates a real desire for change. Being forced into it doesn't count.

See the stimulating documentary "Helvetica" only if you want to alter the way you look at everything. "Helvetica" travels around our colorful world to follow the evolution of the humble titular typeface that's startling in its ubiquity (seriously, it'll blow your mind) and has, over its 50-year existence, come to embody both individual expression and globalization. Its Swiss origins (the name comes from the Latin for Switzerland, Helvetia) provide director Gary Hustwit his jumping-off point, as the film touches upon the chaotic futility of advertising before Helvetica's sweeping domination.

Many graphic designers hold forth about their admiration/resentment of the neutral font, some railing against its strictness while others wax over its flexibility, though all admiring Helvetica's mark on 20th-century graphic design. Watching artists geek out over letters can be a bit dry at times, but Hustwit accompanies the commentary with vivid images that make the ideas accessible to those of us whose familiarity with typeface is limited to the drop-down menu that we rarely use. Another subtle highlight of "Helvetica" is the music, especially an ambient LA duo called El Ten Eleven, whose tunes are rather jarring in their lush urgency. 

Smart People

(R), directed by Noam Murro

Now playing

Helvetica

(NR), directed by Gary Hustwit

Screens Saturday and Sunday at the Dryden