Smart People (2008)

When pompous Carnegie Mellon literature professor Lawrence Wetherhold (Dennis Quaid) suffers head trauma, multiple medical follow-up exam scenes follow. These interspersed hospital scenes inexplicably depict an ongoing physician-patient relationship between the protagonist and his emergency room doc (Sarah Jessica Parker).

Equally baffling is a scene of a neurologist (Daivd Denman, who plays Pam's former fiance on NBC's The Office) using a slit lamp to perform an evaluation. While I applaud any screen-time that our tool of the trade gets, seeing a neurologist handling it made me kind of queasy.

Smart People features a quirkier-than-thou cast of misfits and the occasionally engaging dig at academia. I liked the sense of place and much of the acting. Ultimately, the forced eccentricity (Gilmore Girls, anyone?) doomed this movie for me. I give it a C + .

A couple of quick Ophthalmology in Film tidbits:

• Blindness, starring Julianne Moore, had its release date pushed back to next week, September 26th. I'm trying to finish up the novel of the same name by Nobel-laureate Jose Saramago before it opens, and the extra week will definitely help out. If the movie version contains even a quarter of the eye-related content of the book, this one may prove to be the Citizen Kane of ophthalmology movies.
• Derailed (2005), starring Jennifer Aniston and Clive Owen, depicts a character with corneal scarring secondary to gunshot wounds. I kind of liked this thriller despite its cliched elements, but it really got panned on Rotten Tomatoes (20%). There are also some great shots of Chicago. I give this one a B .