When the actress formerly known as Carrie Bradshaw and the actress formerly known as Juno get to debating about the meaning of SAT vocabulary words, you know you’ve stumbled into some weird vortex of self-conscious cleverness (did you know that “eft” is the name for the terrestrial phase of a newt’s lifecycle!?). This is one of the many unfortunate moments of slightly pretentious but not altogether intelligent comedic stabs in “Smart People,” a film that poses as being darkly witty, heartwarming and original, but fails on all counts.

Directed by Noam Murro and written by Mark Poirer, “Smart People” tells the story of the widower Lawrence Wetherhold (Dennis Quaid), a literature professor at Carnegie Mellon who has fallen into a post-grieving state of bitterness and misanthropy. He is estranged from his children, the classically angsty son James (Ashton Holmes) and the quirkily conservative and over-achieving Vanessa (Ellen Page). But after a freak accident, the reemergence of an “adopted” brother Chuck (Thomas Haden Church) and the beginning of a new relationship with a former-student-turned-doctor Janet Hartigan (Sarah Jessica Parker), Lawrence’s life begins to change, and we are all beginning to learn some lessons.

“Smart People” is neither funny nor engaging because it is populated by flat reincarnations of character types found in this genre of small-scale, irreverent and bittersweet comedy (for a better quality example, see “Little Miss Sunshine”). What’s even worse is that these smart people are not very likeable. Underneath the thick, prototypical beard of an academic, Quaid’s Lawrence is too cold and arrogant to win our affection. Parker’s Janet is bland, to say the least. Page, as Quaid’s high-achieving and inexplicably neo-conservative daughter, lacks the charm and innocence she brought to the screen in “Juno.” There are moments when we get glimpses of the sadness and mourning inside, but, under the camouflage of quips and banter, Vanessa comes off as perpetually hostile and irritated. Church as brother Chuck can be funny at moments, with his reptilian face and oddball sensibility (in one weird moment of ridiculousness, Chuck calls Lawrence “as dumb as a dumbass ant”), but one has the sense that he has been imported into the film for the sole purpose of adding some much-needed goofiness to the sarcastic and bleak world.

Poirier guides his characters through various twists and turns. Quaid and Parker go through a strained courtship of former student and teacher, and Page and Church have a strange relationship of their own. But it all ends up feeling tiresome and contrived because, at their core, these characters are false. Plus, there are one or two plot points toward the end that feel especially silly. I won’t ruin the end, but the slide show during the closing credits is a display of cheesiness to behold.

You might find yourself laughing at certain careful moments of orchestrated cleverness. “Smart People” does throw around a few satisfying zingers. However, all the grammar jokes and literary banter fall flat. At one moment, Page’s Vanessa suggests to her adopted uncle that they should give all her deceased mother’s clothes to Goodwill for the tax write-off. Church stares blankly at her for a moment and responds, “You monster.” They then proceed to give away the clothes, anyway. It is kind of funny, but it mostly just makes you wonder whether or not these characters have any real feelings, or are they just vehicles for glibness?

Perhaps I’m being too cynical. Maybe “Smart People” earnestly tries to tell the story of a family in grief, of high achievers with an incapacity to know themselves or the mysteries of love. But like the passing and superficial name-checking of “Bleak House” and William Carlos Williams poems, the pathos pool is fairly shallow. When Quaid looks at a picture of his dead wife smiling on some beach in the past, it looks cheaply photoshopped. The fact is, it doesn’t matter who the dead wife is, it just matters that she’s dead, that Lawrence is a bitter widower, the better for some biting repartee with the cute blonde doctor. “Smart People” wants us to learn that intelligent people have a lot to learn about love, but it has nothing to do with real love, real grief, real people or real smarts.