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Let me first just say, I have nothing against smart people. Having spent the majority of my life in a town said to have the highest concentration of Ph.D.s in the entire country, at least half of my friends and family are extraordinarily smart people. Growing up, it was somewhat of a running joke that most of us kids had one if not two parents who were "Dr.s." When 9/11 happened and my sister's soccer coach was immediately flown to Washington D.C. to consult on matters of national security, no one batted an eye. And let's just say, when I worked at the local bookstore, the fact that customers asked to have titles like Finite Volume Methods for Hyperbolic Problems gift wrapped was not abnormal.

But after growing up in a world dominated by smart people, beginning a journey into adulthood in which becoming another one of those smart people was the only option I was really aware of, and realizing that my value and ability to function in this world might actually be defined by more than just my test scores, my degrees, and how many miles above everyone else's head I could talk and think, I must say that that the message of this spring's Smart People is one I couldn't agree with more. Smart people may know all the right words, they may have gone to all the right schools, but as the movie's tagline says, "sometimes the smartest people have the most to learn."

While the smart people I grew up with were all of the science/math/computer sort, the smart people that we meet in Smart People are the tenured academic literary type. At the center of it all is Lawrence Wetherhold (Dennis Quaid), a literature professor at Carnegie Mellon University. He is the professor who grades everything according to what he would have done (and in turn gives all his students Cs or below). He is the kind of person who thinks his superiority gives him the right to park anywhere he wants. He doesn't bother to learn any of his students' names, he corrects everyone's grammar, and he considers himself the only choice for the Head of Department position that has just opened up.

To say Lawrence has some issues would be an understatement. When his adopted brother Chuck (Thomas Haden Church), a former student (Sarah Jessica Parker), and his daughter Vanessa (Ellen Page) step into the picture, it only becomes clearer how severe those issues actually are. But although his budding romance with his former student emphasizes his selfishness and the arrival of Chuck highlights his sense of superiority, it is through Lawrence's daughter Vanessa that we most clearly see the full extent of the problems that come with living and thinking as he does.

"You're my role model," Vanessa tells him. And with Lawrence giving respect to no one but himself and spending the only time he isn't worshiping himself holding firmly to the "perfect" memory of his deceased wife, it is no surprise that Vanessa's goals in life could be boiled down to becoming her father and her mother at the same time. Not only is her wall covered with blue ribbons and report cards filled with A's, but she also cooks dinner for the family every evening and dresses in a strangely matronly fashion.

For Vanessa, to be a valuable part of this world is to be worthy of her father's respect, and thus she acts accordingly. But when her slacker uncle arrives, we see that that sense of value just isn't cutting it. At first she scorns Chuck's lazy lifestyle and aimless pursuits. But in a moment of abandon, when she falls into his life for an evening, stops trying to be all she thinks she should be for a few hours, and almost instinctively reaches out for what she sees as a love that does not depend on her grades, her cooking, or her vocabulary, we see her need to be loved simply for who she is.

And so rests the central problem with living in a world defined by a smart people mentality. If smarts become our only measure of value, not only do we separate ourselves from any and every person we don't consider to be up to academic par, we also tell ourselves and everyone we meet that without our smarts we have no value. When life inevitably throws us situations that cannot be solved with the right answer, formula, or reference book, we will find ourselves at a complete loss as to what to do. And as Vanessa tells her father, that reality is not a happy one, not even close.

In many ways, that unhappy reality is what most of Smart People is about. During many scenes, watching the characters condescendingly and cluelessly bumble their way through a life that doesn't care what their SAT scores are is hilarious. But at the same time, it is also sad. It is tragic to see them grasping so desperately for their own value. It is heartbreaking to see them continue to isolate themselves again and again and again. But in the end, the characters also seem to recognize the same reality that we can see watching from the outside.

They realize that to base their lives and value on being the smartest person they know is both ridiculous and tragic. They learn that it leaves them aching for something more. They finally seem to grasp that happiness will never be found in striving for who we could be and pushing others to be everything we think they should be, but instead in loving who we are without anything and loving who others are at their most flawed. And they see that the greatest satisfaction we may ever get out of this life is in sharing both our smarts and our flaws with all those around us and recognizing that what they have to share with us is just as valuable.

As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing." And after watching Smart People, I must say, that truth could not be any clearer.