Although the names on the poster (including Dennis Quaid, Sarah Jessica Parker and femme de l'heure, Ellen Page) are spangly, this well-written, very well acted film has a comfortable indie feel that allows the audience to experience a closeness to the characters in a way one would have never dreamt of watching earlier incarnations of Ms Parker sashaying along the streets of New York or Mr Quaid exposing his buttocks to the camera as he remonstrates in vain with the back of a departing taxi.

Debutant director, Noam Murro, hitherto better known (within the industry, at least) for his efforts in the field of commercial advertising, teases remarkably sympathetic performances from all his cast, even Quaid as a decidedly unsympathetic character. At the start of his film career a sort of poor man's Harrison Ford with a Jack Nicholson grin, Quaid has gone more the way of the latter with this new direction, playing Lawrence Wetherhold, a physically dishevelled professor of English Literature at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Like many of Nicholson's later roles, this casting for Quaid demands that the actor eschew manly dignity, defuse obvious charisma, and reveal an emotional awkwardness and vulnerability beneath a rumpled demeanour. Quaid's character, while intellectually advanced, is emotionally detached from the world around him, including his own family. Wetherhold is a widower, however, and this provides an opportunity for change in his life.

The change comes in the form of an encounter with a former student, now a doctor at the city hospital, to which Wetherhold is admitted after a bizarre accident leaves him concussed. The doctor, Janet Hartigan (Parker), still has mixed emotions regarding Wetherhold; she recalls a youthful attraction to his intellect and shabby academic charm, but recalls also his less appealing traits, and initially keeps a professional distance. However, after she gives Wetherhold a lift home following a post-trauma check-up, he asks her on a date, and we get to witness the painful attempts (or, rather, the painful lack of them) of a man unused to this type of potentially intimate contact making his way gingerly back into normal social activity and confronting the demands (and demons) of conventional human interaction. Parker's performance is excellent, an understated portrayal of a tough, but brittle character, capable and vulnerable at the same time – a real person, in fact, slightly at odds with expectations.

Page's Vanessa Wetherhold similarly brings a realism to the film, one that both sparkles with the subtlety of the performance and touches with its authenticity. Our introduction to Vanessa, where she learns of her father's accident from Dr Hartigan over the 'phone, but demurs when it is suggested that she might like to visit her father because she has an SAT test the next day, suggests we might be in for another version of the traditional comedy-drama ice queen, whose heart is gradually thawed and revealed as essentially good. This is accurate up to a point, but really Vanessa is a much more complicated character, and Page proves that the acclaim she received for 2007's Juno was not an aberration, with this finely modulated portrayal. Vanessa, with a quick, at times acerbic wit, acidly protective of her father (for whom she acts as something of a surrogate partner, convenient for both as they have little emotional contact with others), hides behind the toothless, automatic smile that stretches wide enough across her face to mask any true emotion at times of conflict, a great vulnerability, the natural concomitant of arrogance, that is emphasized when we see her physical slightness, an adult intellect still very much influenced by being in a adolescent body, as she is interrupted in a gym class by her father. Page manages to bring several layers to the performance, which interact as different aspects of her character submerge and re-emerge in a completely believable depiction of an intellectually gifted, emotionally confused teenager.

Thomas Haden Church (Sideways) as Lawrence's ne'er-do-well adopted brother, Chuck, completes a strong quarter of closely related characters, pulling the relationship dynamic in differing directions as he, along with Parker's character, attempt to add balance to the almost sociopathic pursuit of excellence espoused by the father-daughter duo. Chuck arrives on what is evidently not his first mission to borrow money from his brother, and although rejected, sticks around long enough to discover that Lawrence now needs a chauffeur following his accident, a role that Chuck fulfils with varying levels of commitment/competence. While irritating Lawrence, Chuck takes Vanessa under his wing in an attempt to get her to loosen up and enjoy life a little more; unfortunately for him, this succeeds too well, and he becomes a target for her hormone-fuelled affections as she cannot (and perhaps would not) infiltrate her current age group. Murro admirably refuses to give us an easy resolution to this problem, other than that of Vanessa's imminent departure for Stanford, where she sees her "life beginning, the minute I set foot in California". Chuck's presence in the household, while decidedly for the good in many respects, is not unambiguous in terms of his influence on the family.

Odd man out in the film is Ashton Holmes as James Wetherhold, son to Lawrence, brother-antagonist to Vanessa and nephew-buddy to Chuck. His character seems much more sketchy than the others, out of focus rather than complex, and it seems natural that it is pushed to the periphery of the narrative. James is already a student at Pittsburgh's own Carnegie-Mellon University (free, as his father is a professor there, unlike Stanford), but feels pushed out of his family by the cold intellectual ambition of his father and sister - although he does seem to evince this in a particularly puerile, aggressive manner from time to time. For me, and for all her faults and apparent coldness, Vanessa seemed a much more sympathetic, essentially warm and ultimately believable character than James. Chuck goes to sleep in James's dorm room a couple of nights a week when the Wetherhold home life becomes too much for him, which does underline their emotional similarity as outcasts, but the idea of James as the emotionally normal kid who can tread both side of the tracks (he holds the traditional frat boy beer parties by night, as well as getting to know one of Lawrence's junior female colleagues rather well, while getting poems published in The New Yorker by day) does not ring true. Lawrence visits his son on campus at different times during the film, supposedly to illustrate the distance between the two, as Lawrence tries to invite James back into his life – in effect, though, he seems to be inviting James into the film, an invitation that is refused, as if the character realizes that he is only half-formed and does not wish to expose himself to scrutiny.

The parallel between Lawrence's public life as a respected academic writer, a self-image which is shaken, ultimately life-affirmingly, in the course of the film, and his private life as a father, brother, lover and eventually husband, is beautifully paced and the narrative arc is satisfying without the clichéd, over-neat resolution one might expect from a film that is disguised as a mainstream feelgood comedy, but is more interesting than that, and poses several interesting questions about self-perception, ambition, and their effect upon relationships. Mark Poirier's script also provides some terrific one-liners, that, while often raising a smile, have a poignant echo; when Lawrence confronts Vanessa with her unhappiness, despite her life of high achievement, she responds, "Well, you're not happy – and you’re my role model." The film contains many moments of gentle, but telling, interaction between its protagonists that prickle a little more than the traditional Hollywood vehicle and leave the audience with an abiding interest in the fate of these unusually normal, smart people.

by Tom Scruton