Smile
Director: Michael Ritchie
Year Released: 1975
Rating: 2.0
Obvious pot shot at middle-class hypocrisy: older men 'secretly' lust after vacuous teenage girls once their wives stop having sex with them and teenage girls compete with each over as to who's better looking in a pointless beauty contest run by the adults. Seems like American Beauty, but isn't as forceful - unlike Mendes' film, it never picks a side, choosing a tone of condescension towards its flawed characters, rather than sympathy (Lester Burnham, tragic failure that he is, at least recognizes his own dilemma; everyone here is impervious) and only reacts with mild sympathy for the lead female, who is naïve and confused looking. Reaches its own apex of ridiculousness when the town's white males dress up in faux Ku Klux Klan uniforms and force their new recruits to kiss the ass of a dead chicken. At that point, I mentally checked out of the movie.
