A Smile Like Yours (1997)

Despite Greg Kinnear's comment that "…this is the worst movie I've ever done" I found this movie to be heartwarming and charming. It's about a young couple dealing with sexual issues when they are having problems trying to conceive. Adding to the complications are the wife's (Lauren Holly) dishonesty about her growing business and the husband's (Greg Kinnear) new client whose 'get her own way' attitude drives a wedge between the couple. Along the way their pals (Jay Thomas & Joan Cusack) offer the couple some friendly advice about life and love. Costarring Jill Hennessy & Christopher McDonald as the client and businessman.As much as I liked the movie, I was disappointed when I bought the soundtrack. I was looking for the song "Rain" by Tracie Spencer featured when Danny and Lindsay are in the hotel room together and she is seducing him. It's raining outside and the lyrics went like this, "Let the rain come down (Someday)..." It's not featured on the soundtrack nor any of her studio released compact discs. This song is the highlight of the movie and impossible to find.

'A Smile LIke Yours' is a pathetic comedy that actually makes no sense. I don't mean that the story was complicated, but the entire plot is based on one thing: a couple's desperate and expensive unsuccessful attempts to conceive children. People who tried that hard must've forgotten of the option of the adoption, to which this movie is not kind to.Lauren Holly plays Jennifer Robertson, a complete contradiction to anything offered by the women's liberation movement, exhibiting almost no sense of independence. She is quite a boring character as the dreamy housewife with absolutey nothing else on her mind but to have kids. Like a dumb 50's romance comedy, Greg Kinnear is her submitting husband who likewise displays no personality, no independence, and from us, no interest. They are the two most boring and often annoying characters, and they hardly make for topics of a comedy that should present itself with many mishaps, which should arise from a couple doing all they can to get pregnant. Except, they really don't do anything except go to a fertility clinic and shell out a whole lot of money to do what they could do in the privacy of their own (except for that in vitro fertilization number). The plot hardly allows for any mishaps, because well, the couple don't do anything to create any sort of bizarre situation. They just go to this clinic. So what?The subplots are meant to test the faithfulness of the couple, a necessary moral element of the story since the couple does plan on conceiving children together. Jennifer works at a new age shop with her friend (played by Joan Cusak), and they are in the business of developing aphrodesiacs. Christopher MacDonald plays the intrested buyer and Jennifer is the promising negotiator of a pretty price for her and her friend's product. The subplot hardly offers much to keep you interested (although Joan Cusak is pretty funny in the restaraunt scene).Danny (Kinear) is an architect, who finds an opportunity to make some extra money to cover the clinic bills, by taking on a job in Seattle, where his boss is the crass seductress (also another hopeless, helpless female character) who tries to influence Danny (as dumb as he is) to have an affair with her once things are conveniently rocky with him and his wife (for reasons I don't care to give away). Jill Hennesy is good in the role, but her character is too predictable, and too formulaic as a much needed element to create conflict for Danny. It is stupid and once again, hardly interesting. The overall movie itself is utterly boring, and hardly funny at all (save the restaraunt scene and the airline flight). The plot offers nothing that is really attention-grabbing. Even if the story was entirely about two people trying to conceive, the writers could've figured out several hilarious mishaps to develop out of that. Second, the main characters are completely boring. They are complete silouhettes of dumb 1950s comedies with happy wife and clueless husband. So, even without mishaps present in the plot, the characters themselves offer nothing interesting, let alone funny.Joan Cusak should've been in the lead and someone else should've taken Kinnear's part. Cusak would've made even a lousy story outrageously funny (as she sometimes does in her co-starring role here). This is definitely one to pass up.

Smile Like Yours, A (1997) Stillborn, awkwardly conceived comedy about a couple who cannot conceive a baby; Greg Kinnear is this building engineer and Lauren Holly designs perfumes, and many of their trips to the fertility clinic prove fruitless. A SMILE LIKE YOURS has cheap, sometimes embarrassing jokes, and clichéd complications and easy sitcom solutions. One of the cliched complications involves Jill Hennessy as Kinnear's co-worker who's attracted to him, and lures him to a hotel room during Holly's and his separation. It also tries too hard to be funny, delightful, and charming, that it fails being any of them. GRADE: D

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.