I’d give Smart People a B-, and that’s why, in its own way, it’s perfect.

Because Smart People is the Platonic ideal of a genre I’m going to call “bric-a-brac,” or “BRIttle CAucasians BRooding And Collapsing.” (I know, right? Great acronym!)

This movie is not fantastic, which means it doesn’t transcend or subvert its genre, but it’s good enough to you appreciate why this type of film gets made. Sitting in the middle of a bell curve, it’s an excellent starting point for understanding the dozens and dozens of other movies that are like it.

So using Smart People, which I just saw this afternoon, I’ve created a handy user’s guide to bric-a-brac films. Feel free to tape it on your fridge!

CLUES THAT YOU’RE WATCHING A BRIC-A-BRAC FILM

(1) The movie is about a group of intelligent, pensive white people—most often an extended family—that is marred by serious dysfunction.

The title Smart People immediately tells us we’re dealing with brainiacs, but it also suggests they have problems. Why point out that they’re smart unless they’re dumb in the ways of human relationships, right?

The Wetherhold family certainly lives up to the title’s promises: Pater familias Lawrence Wetherhold (Dennis Quaid) is a professor at Carnegie Mellon (fancy!) who teaches Victorian literature (fancier!) and writes lofty books about literary criticism (fanciest!).  Son James may only be a college student, but he has already published a poem in The New Yorker. And his daughter Vanessa (Ellen Page) is a high school senior who (naturally) gets a perfect score on her SATs and gets accepted early-decision to Stanford.

But here’s the thing: No one in the family can communicate. They either don’t speak, or they speak through hostile wisecracks.

Importantly, we frequently see this chilly dysfunction expressed around the dinner table, and one scene even unfolds during a Christmas meal. Bric-a-brac films loooove to contradict the notion of family meals as pleasant times of togetherness, especially at the holidays.

A common offshoot of this family unhappiness is an affair that only makes the adulterers feel worse, as in Little Children, The Big Chill, and We Don’t Live Here Anymore.

(2) Most of the characters have preposterously quirky habits

Guess what: If you drive Lawrence Wetherhold somewhere, he is always going to sit on the right side of the car. And his daughter? Well, she loves being a Republican so much that she has taped a picture of Ronald Reagan to her wall. What a teen! And don’t get me started on Lawrence’s adopted brother Chuck (Thomas Haden Church). That dude is middle-aged, but he sleeps in red pajamas with a flap on the butt. Yowza!

These quirks are irritating when they suggest a film is trying to cheat. Rather than developing a character, it’ll have her wear holiday sweatshirts in an ironic way, as though that tells us everything about her attitude and emotional state.

(3) At least one of the characters is a slob or a total neat freak.

In Smart People, you get both: Lawrence is a pot-bellied, shirt-untucked kind of guy, and Vanessa is Ms. Spic-n-Span. In both cases, these characters are using their outward appearance to express their loneliness. If you’re extremely messy or extremely neat, then you are unlike most people, and in a bric-a-brac movie, that’s always a sign of being an unhappy outsider.

(4) Great changes occur when someone from a different intellectual or economic class stumbles into the central group. The newcomer is usually in touch with his/her emotions, despite being a “failure” by the others’ standards.

Like clockwork, Lawrence’s half-brother Chuck, with his interest in pot, his job selling phone cards, and his “cool dude” vocabulary, helps liberate Vanessa. He doesn’t redeem her totally—and he’s not an angel himself—which is one reason the movie rises above mediocrity, but it’s clear that his character exists to help these egghgeads chill out. (The plot contorts itself to ensure that Chuck lives in the family house, which only helps him rock their worlds.)

I’d say Mark Ruffalo’s character in You Can Count On Me, one of my favorite movies of all time, is another perfect example of this phenomenon. Even great movies adhere to formulas sometimes.

(5) The soundtrack features literate, acoustic ballads by obscure Brooklyn artists. Or artists that everyone thought was dead. Or artists who are actually dead, due to beautifully tragic accidents.

Smart People resurrects the career of Nuno Bettencourt, former member of the 90s sensation Extreme. (And don’t act like you didn’t slow dance to “More Than Words”.)

Understandably, I assumed Nuno was either dead or working in an In ‘n’ Out Burger. Turns out, he wrote the the score for this movie and most of its songs.

His work is great—vulnerable and full of texture—and on a few cuts, his co-writer is former Extreme bandmate Gary Cherone, who was briefly the lead singer of Van Halen. I don’t know how that affects the movie, but it seems vital somehow.

In general, this type of obscure, sensitive music expresses feelings that can’t be housed in dialogue. It also points out the supposed “sophistication” of the characters. If you play Britney Spears on the soundtrack, you’re suggesting we’re in a populist world where people do things just to have fun. And that kind of happiness is rare in bric-a-brac, because few people in these movies can do anything without thinking about it first. If someone does enjoy the newest hit from Daughtry, they’ll be sure to justify it in an academic way, using phrases like “bluesy roots” and “anthropological interest.”

Perfect example: Even though it was released by Disney and stars Steve Carrell (see #7), Dan in Real Life is a total bric-a-brac movie. Just consider the soundtrack, which was entirely written by the indie-cool singer-songwriter Sondre Lerche.

(6) A young white guy has written and/or directed the film, and it’s being released through an indie and/or hip studio.

With Smart People, distributed by Miramax, director Noam Murro and writer Mark Poirier join a club that includes Kenneth Lonergan, Noah Baumbach, Jason Reitman, Wes Anderson, Bart Freundlich, and many, many others. Sure, there are bric-a-brac women like Diablo Cody and Tamara Jenkins, but they’re still in the minority.

(7) At least one of the actors is famous for being a goofy comedian or a big-budget star.

In this case, that’d be Sarah Jessica Parker, playing the love interest to Dennis Quaid. Before Smart People, they showed a preview for Sex and the City, in which SJP gets to be a glamorous comedienne with washboard abs and fabulous costumes. Smart People lets her stay “real” and reference her roots in underground movies like L.A. Story…and Flight of the Navigator.

See also: Jack Black in Margot at the Wedding, Will Ferrell in Winter Passing, and Mary Tyler Moore in Ordinary People.

(8) Even in the most emotional scenes, no one ever seems vulnerable. Not even the children.

You certainly never hear screaming in Smart People, even though everyone obviously wants to holler out. That’s another sign of emotional repression, of course, and when characters do let their feelings run free—as with Timothy Hutton’s unhappy teenager in Ordinary People—their catharsis tends to be the focal point of the movie.