A more accurate title for the ensemble comedy Smart People might have been Unhappy People, since it's their mutual mopeyness that links all the film's characters. First-time director Noam Murro, working from a script by novelist-turned-screenwriter Mark Jude Poirier, is content to let us wallow in the cast's photogenic, witty sadness: By film's end, everyone is still pretty much as miserable as they started, if a little wiser and more open to the possibility of doing something about it.

The lack of actual plot probably contributed to Smart People's disappointing box office in April, but the film makes ideal viewing for home video (Miramax, $30 DVD, $35 Blu-ray), where its laidback pace is a perfect match for the comfort of your couch. Dennis Quaid, sporting a permanently furrowed brow and fake pot belly, downplays his usual charisma to play the curmudgeonly Lawrence Wetherhold, a literature college professor who has not been able to care about anything or anyone since the death of his wife.

His SAT-obsessed daughter Vanessa (Juno's Ellen Page) who adores him, emulates him and quite possibly matches him on the IQ scale, has devoted herself to filling in for her missing mom at the expense of her own adolescent life. Her college-age brother (Ashton Holmes) at least appears to be moving on with his life. Their unemployed uncle (Thomas Haden Church), though, who moves into their home at the start of the film, suffers from the opposite problem: An apparent refusal to grow up.

The appeal of Smart People, which also stars Sarah Jessica Parker as one of Lawrence's former students turned potential love interest, comes in watching these actors bounce off each other while having strained family dinners or cruelly evaluating each other's lifestyles. There's little else to the movie, which is why the commentary track accompanying the film by Murro and Poirier has so little to offer other than the usual praise for the actors and tidbits about the Pittsburgh shooting locations.

Other extras include a handful of brief deleted scenes that add small but extraneous character beats to the story, a making-of featurette where everyone takes a turn expounding on what a great project it was and an amusing blooper reel in which Quaid and Parker spend a lot of time cracking each other up on the set; in the film, they rarely trade smiles.

`NIM'S ISLAND'

The family adventure Nim's Island (20th Century Fox, $30 DVD, $40 Blu-ray) is exactly the sort of picture Jodie Foster used to make for Disney when she was a child, although she never overacted as badly as she does here, playing an agoraphobic novelist helping a little girl (Abigail Breslin) search for her missing father (Gerald Butler) on an island in the South Pacific.

Foster is a lot better on an ''adventure commentary'' track in which she and Breslin talk about the assortment of animals and creatures they shared the screen with and what filming was like on the island. Foster also says she made the film to have something to watch with her own kids, but this is not exactly the best example of what she's capable of as an actress.

At least Nim's Island gets an eye-popping transfer on Blu-ray (an A/B comparison with the DVD really shows you all the fine detail and stronger colors the hi-def format is capable of). Both versions get a healthy assortment of extras, including several making-of featurettes and some intriguing deleted scenes that hinted at a more fantastical version of the movie. The Blu-ray disc also features a picture-in-picture track that lets you watch the extras alongside the movie.

`FELON'

Prison dramas are usually straight-to-video fodder, and the gritty Felon (Sony, $25 DVD, $38 Blu-ray) is no exception, despite the presence of some surprisingly big names in its cast. Stephen Dorff stars as the family man sent to the slammer after accidentally killing an intruder outside his home. He immediately runs afoul of a sadistic prison guard (Harold Perrineau) -- is there ever any other kind? -- who decides to make life even more hellish for the new inmate.

Directed in an odd style by Ric Roman Waugh that relies a little too often on extreme closeups and obviously made on a shoestring budget, Felon wouldn't be much different from your ordinary, gratuitously violent prison drama, except that when Val Kilmer enters the picture as Dorff's new jailmate, or Anne Archer and Sam Shepard pop up in small supporting roles, you start wondering if there may be more afoot than initially appeared. No such luck -- this is a conventional and unmemorable exploitation flick -- but Kilmer, sporting an unusual amount of body weight, a Wolfman Jack-hairdo and Coke-bottle glasses, delivers another fascinating, bizarre performance as the Lizard King-ish serial killer who all the prisoners fear. He makes Felon worth watching.

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