Smile (Michael Ritchie, USA, 1975, 113 min)
Union South Marquee Theater, Friday, June 20, 7pm»
Smile (1975) makes fun of beauty pageants. The film covers the small town of Santa Rosa’s Young American Miss pageant in its entirety, from the initial set-up to the announcement of the new beauty queen. The people of the town are all wrapped into this annual event and the result is a comical obsession with a sex-filled, superficial event. The slapstick humor eventually turns in a much darker direction than expected, and by the end of the film I was surprised by how strange the satire became. Smile‘s dark humor made the movie.
Smile focuses on several characters whose lives, in some way, are affected by the pageant. These include one of the pageant judges, Big Bob (Bruce Dern) whose optimistic attitude comes to a sharp halt when he realizes that he has turned into a Young American Miss.
Brenda (Barbara Feldon) is the pageant coordinator. She is high strung and frigid and because of her prude-ness, her husband (Nicholas Pryor) has become the town drunk.
Robin (Denise Nickerson) and Doria (Annette O’Toole) are both Young American Miss contestants. The two are roommates and Doria slowly teaches Robin the tricks to win beauty pageants, which mostly has to do with sex. Doria’s talent consisted of her advocating for inner beauty while stripping off her clothes.
Beyond these main characters there is a cast of strong personalities whose differences add a lot of comic humor. There are the custodians who hide liquor bottles in vending machines and behind fire extinguishers. There’s Big Bob’s son, Little Bob, who gets caught taking naked pictures of the contestants and ends up with a shrink. There’s the head of the orchestra who insults the contestants and then there’s the other Young American Miss contestants who range from awkward, to lobotomized, to overly enthusiastic.
Smile is dated in many respects, filled with 70’s clothing, technology and sexual mores, but its humor still holds up and its view of beauty pageants is still relevant today. Before watching it I was surprised that Smile has a 100% Tomatometer Rating on Rotten Tomatoes because what I expected from the movie was solely light humor and maybe for it to be a bit raunchy. But Smile went in directions I did not expect; it got violent, cult-ish and exploited the quirks of small towns. The dark humor mocked the silly aspects of beauty pageants and the obsession that revolves around them, while still having characters that you slightly root and care for.