A Smile Like Yours

This is meant to be a comedy but mainly bad taste, and nothing remotely causing a smile in the film. The movie is about a couple trying for a child, and those people in real life who are in that situation will wince at the depictions that are portrayed. For instance scenes at a fertility clinic are not in the least funny and are quite frankly embarrassing. The male lead who plays a construction worker and in his hard hat comes across as a poor excuse for a reject from Village People. The female lead is trying to look 20 years younger than she is. Both leads come across as unappealing,unattractive and completely unconvincing. There are various ridiculous and totally unassuming gratuitous scenes in the film, for example with a budget airline, which is devoid of any humor. The only reason I give this 3/10 instead of 1/10 is one mark for Shirley Maclaine, who is a a class above anything else in the pic, and one mark for some half decent(albeit old) music.

This movie could have been so funny... really. It had a good premise, a couple trying to get pregnant, half of that couple is Greg Kinnear... how could it go wrong?? Well, for starters it was two hours long. The story-line was barely strong enough to sustain an hour and a half but no they had to torture us with an extra half hour most of which was owned by an endless musical montage right in the middle of the movie. Secondly, the casting. Greg Kinnear was strong and appealing despite the thin plot. Jay Mohr was alright as Jay Mohr goes. Joan Cusak was delightful, as she always is. Jill Hennessy was stunningly beautiful and just about the only actor to put any depth into her character at all. The glaring problem was Lauren Holly. She was just awful, and contrasted with the performance of Jill Hennessy, who, despite her shameless pursuit of a married man you actually begin to root for, Holly pales in comparison I found myself wondering why they hadn't cast Hennessy in Holly's role and vice versa. The movie would have been so much more easy to bear.

The best that I can say about this film is that it was mildly amusing at times, and that it was an adequate time killer. Unfortunately, this film is also so annoying that I wanted to slap these characters around. This is the kind of film that is so sweet, it hurts your teeth. The intentions were good, I suppose, but things get awfully tiresome when the dialogue is SO nauseating. When the two leads aren't together on-screen, this really isn't bad at all, but be afraid during those frequent moments when the loving couple starts talking to one another.

In San Francisco, Danny Robertson (Greg Kinnear) and his wife Jennifer (Lauren Holly) are happily married except they disagree on having a baby. Steve Harris (Jay Thomas) is his best friend and works for him on his construction site. Lindsay Hamilton (Jill Hennessy) is the hot new architect. Jennifer runs a perfume shop with her best friend Nancy Tellen (Joan Cusack).

Nothing is truly offensive but this is terribly flat like the couple's singing. It's meant to be funny but it's just mildly annoying. Neither Kinnear nor Holly are real comedians. They could be good if the comedic material is great. That's not this movie. The material is not close to being funny. Maybe if one of them is played by a good comedian. The jokes are barely jokes even if they're performed perfectly. This has the comedic roadmap but lacks the funny bone to write the jokes. It has the structure but not the stuffing to fill it out. It doesn't help that fertility is not automatically funny and the writing has nothing funny for it.

This film is about a young couple having difficulties to conceive a baby. She(Holly)constantly surprises her unsuspecting husband(Kinnear) on the most unusual places. And each time she uses a new, self-made aphrodisiac and they have sex. However, something seems to be wrong with the man's potency. They go on and try everything they can, including a clinic with some bizarre fertility instruments.

This is the premise for a romantic comedy about fertility, having a baby and the problems that can come out of this. It doesn't really work that well on a comic level. There are some modest chuckles in it, but not really funny-funny scenes. The actors however make this pretty enjoyable and carry the film along way. Given its length(98 min), you can't blame the film to be overlong either. The best moments come out of the conversations between some of the characters. Joan Cusack has some of the better scenes in the film and Shirley MacLaine has a ( very)small(too small?) part as Holly's mother.

The makers also decided to put in some sort of affair of Kinnear's character with a beautiful colleague-architect(Hennessy), but this doesn't add much to the story. All in all this is pretty watchable and amiable stuff. There are "romantic comedies" that are far worse than this one, given the pretty silly premise. So if it's on TV and you've got nothing else to do, you might consider watching it. On the other hand, there are films that are also much better than this one. Good films about (having) babies are however very hard to find. 6/10(it doesn't really deserve the BOMB-rating of Leonard Maltin)