Smile

Director Michael Ritchie made two films in the seventies that nailed the suburban existence, not just of Southern California, but of America right on the head.

While Bad News Bears was a deserved box office hit, the under-recognized Smile is the better movie...and that's saying a lot as I adore them both. Having seen the recently released Thank You For Smoking and its lame attempt at broad satire it made me reflect about what made Smile so great. Ritchie genuinely cares for his characters, making them sympathetic instead of one dimensional cardboard cut-outs which would have been very easy to do. The many characters Ritchie focuses on are human, with all the foibles that entails, so while it may be easy to laugh at the beauty pageant contestants and their problems, you do it with a touch of guilt because they are so earnest in their attempt to win respect from not only the judges, but the choreographer (Michael Kidd), the den mother (Barbara Feldon), and ultimately themselves.

To mock them is to mock yourself for rooting for your favorite girl at the film's conclusion which fittingly, as it turns out, doesn't matter anyway.

Now that's good satire.

A truly under appreciated gem.

All the beauty contestants have to "Smile" in this 1975 film written by Jerry Belson and directed by Michael Ritchie. It's a take-off on pageants and American values in the '70s. It stars Barbara Feldon, Bruce Dern, Michael Kidd, and Nicholas Pryor, while featuring some familiar young faces as contestants: Melanie Griffith, Colleen Camp, and Annette O'Toole.

Feldon is the ever-chipper but icy "Young American Miss" who has no use for her drunken husband (Pryor) and devotes herself to the pageant; she's terrific, as is Bruce Dern as a used car salesman, the main judge of the pageant who has an enterprising son with a Polaroid camera. Best of all is Michael Kidd as the choreographer. Kidd started out as a ballet dancer, moved to Broadway, and finally Hollywood where he danced, acted, and choreographed, later adding directing to his list of talents. Here, he gives a wonderful performance as a choreographer whose cynicism and toughness hides a heart of gold.

There are too many vignettes among the contestants to describe - the talent competition that consists of packing a suitcase, the flaming baton; the rehearsals with the orchestra are hilarious, as is the contestant looking for her butter churn.

The film hits just the right note between satire/comedy and drama. Beauty contestants haven't changed much; they all want to help people, and being brought up without a father is a distinct advantage. Boys are still horny. And never has any of this been presented in a more of a light, amusing way than in "Smile."

There's something very disturbing and creepy about the "wholesome" teen beauty pageant. It might be the "stage mothers" who are not just living through their daughters, but seem to actually be re-living the vainglorious days of their own pathetic lives before they became frumpy, boring housewives. It might be the way every male from the horny pre-teens to dirty old rotters leers at the teenage girls as they go through the "talent", "swimsuit", and "vim and vigor" portions of these ridiculous contests. Whatever it is, the subject is ripe for satire. This forgotten 70's movie is less famous than the more recent "Drop Dead Gorgeous", but it's really a lot more on-target as far as satire goes. Whereas the later film has its moments (Ellen Barkin's trailer trash mom with a beer can burnt onto her hand or the stupid contestant who has had a sexual encounter with Adam West), the satire in this movie is a lot more subtle and effective. There's the idiotic emcee who says things like: "Isn't she beautiful? Aren't they all beautiful? Isn't everybody beautiful?". There's the scary, Stepford-like pageant director (Barbara Feldon)who for the sake of "the girls" doesn't press charges after her drunken husband (quite understandably)tries to shoot her. Then there's the male community leaders led by "Big Bob" (Bruce Dern) who at one point dress in bedsheets and have an initiation ceremony in the park which ends up looking like an especially homoerotic Ku Klux Klan rally.

The adult actors are mostly just hilarious caricatures, but the contestants are more realistic and likable. The most famous faces are Melanie Griffith and Colleen Camp, but the main stars are Joan Prather (from TV's "Eight is Enough") and a young Annette O'Toole. The ending is kind of anti-climactic, but something about it kind of stays with you. It's not a great movie perhaps, but it was one made at a rare time when America could honestly look at itself in the mirror--and what is there is both funny and disturbing.

So rarely do we find such a dark and acidic commentary filmed in such an exquisitely light fashion. "American Beauty" is an example of success in this genre, but the relatively obscure "Smile" reigns supreme.

It lays bare all the emptiness and hypocrisy of suburban America relentlessly and without mercy, and yet somehow manages to keep itself funny and bright and rarely deals with its subject matter with an overt contempt or scorn.

"Agent 99" Barbara Feldon is superb as the veneer ice-queen teen beauty pageant coordinator -- all diplomacy and smiles glossing over a charred and empty soul. (She greets the dog with smiles and kisses then ignores the husband.) Likewise, Bruce Dern portrays his vapid community leader role with perfect candor, and it becomes delicious to see him question what he perceived as the status quo.

A truly classic and trail-blazing film, well directed and edited and brilliantly written and acted. Such a shame it remains so obscure and unknown. This is one of my top five favourite films and becomes richer and more intricate with each viewing.

And I will never hear Nat King Cole sing the title song again and not picture the strained and pained perma-grins as the opening shot pans across the hopeful beauty contestants.

Extremely smart little satire that uses a state beauty pageant as a microcosm for a stinging look at American values, with hypocrisy rampant and greed triumphant. Writer Jerry Belson delineates his characters very carefully, so that we know whom to side with and whom to despise, and the nearly no-name cast portrays them brilliantly. Talented Joan Prather is the contestant we most identify with, decent, but slowly being corrupted as the urge to win overtakes her, and Michael Kidd is the semi-big-time choreographer who at first seems callous and unlikable but turns out to be merely seeing, and telling, it like it is. There's some too-easy comedy as we view the contestants' terrible talent competition entries, but at the end we've seen a remarkably thorough put-down of American values circa 1975. (Maybe it didn't get more attention because its utter honesty and accuracy about the American way of winning, a pet theme of the director's, made people uncomfortable.) The final scene, in the police car, is just a perfect wrap-up.