Smile (1975)

Directed by

Michael Ritchie

Genre

comedy drama

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 53m

Rated

PG

Rating

5.9 of 10 from 43 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A beauty pageant in a small California town becomes a stage for the petty hypocrisies and hidden dreams of the contestants and the adults running the show. The movie follows various characters, including a judge, a local booster, and several young women, as their private absurdities clash with the pageant's polished facade.

satiricalwryobservationallightheartedbittersweetcharacter-drivenperiodquirky

What happens

Smile is a 1975 American satirical comedy film directed by Michael Ritchie, written by Jerry Belson, and starring Bruce Dern, Barbara Feldon, Michael Kidd, and Geoffrey Lewis. The film focuses on various personalities involved in a beauty pageant in Santa Rosa, California, and satirizes small-town America and its peculiarities, hypocrisies and artifice within and around the pageant. Filmed on location in Santa Rosa, the film premiered at the USA Film Festival in Dallas, Texas, and opened theatrically in Los Angeles in July 1975 before screening at the 1975 New York Film Festival. Though it received generally favorable reviews from critics, the film was a box-office flop. In the years since its release, Smile went on to develop a cult following. It was adapted into a 1986 Broadway musical of the same name with songs by Marvin Hamlisch and Howard Ashman. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

More like this

• Nashville (1975)
• Shampoo (1975)
• Alfie Darling (1975)
• Promise Him Anything (1975)
• Return to Macon County (1975)
• The Dream Makers (1975)
• The Wild Party (1975)
• My Friends (1975)