Long before "Miss Congeniality" and "Drop Dead Gorgeous" -- way back in 1975 -- there was "Smile." It's time once again for the Young American Miss beauty pageant, and car dealer Big Bob Freelander (Dern) and former pageant winner and discontented housewife Brenda DiCarlo (Feldon) take their leadership roles very seriously. Teenaged girls from all over southern Cal participate in the event, a professional choreographer (French, who really was one) is hired to coach them, and Big Bob's youthful son is taking money to get Polaroids of the contestants in their changing room. There's also a hilarious side plot involving Big Bob's friend Andy (Nicholas Pryor, playing Brenda's drunken husband), who is NOT enthused about kissing the plucked chicken at the next Jaycee event. Watch for Melanie Griffith, barely 18 at the time of the filming, and Annette O'Toole as the worldly wise contestant Doria Houston, aka Miss Anaheim. (Among the choreographed numbers is "Me Old Bamboo," from the 1968 "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" soundtrack!) Dick McGarvin is a marvelously smarmy local celeb host. Although the film looks dated, it is less over-the-top, more unnervingly plausible, than the more recent satires mentioned above.
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The review of this Movie prepared by David Loftus
