Smile
Y
April 8, 2005
Inspired by his daughter's experiences as a volunteer with Operation Smile, Jeffrey Kramer set out to make a film about the organization, whose worldwide medical missions treat children with correctable facial deformities. Causes don't get much worthier, and "Smile" is a labor of love, a portion of the film's proceeds earmarked for the humanitarian group.
The writer-director didn't want to make a documentary, but there's little doubt that a nonfiction film would have been more powerful than this strained drama, which offers a Malibu brat as the audience's point of identification. The heroine might draw other teens into the story; the film feels destined for classrooms as a recruitment tool for Operation Smile. It opens today in Los Angeles and San Francisco, adding New York and other markets in two weeks.
The only engaging elements of "Smile" are its sequences filmed on the Chinese mainland; it's the rare Western project to receive permits from Beijing. Kramer and DP Edward Pei offer intriguing glimpses of Shanghai and, especially, of the 2,000-year-old village of Jingxi. Scenes of the workaday village and its nightlife -- there's an open-air screening of "Cowboy and the Senorita" -- hold a strong fascination.
The same can't be said of the Malibu part of the story, complete with mother-daughter conversations about contraception while the waves roll in on their private beach.
Golden girl Katie (Mika Boorem, "Blue Crush") starts climbing out of her self-absorption when a student council adviser (Sean Astin) suggests the organization Doctor's Gift as a rewarding way to earn service credits. She becomes one of two kids from Malibu High chosen to participate in a mission to Shanghai.
Lin (Yi Ding), the Chinese teen girl Katie is destined to befriend, was abandoned as an infant for her disfiguring cleft lip (Stan Winston's prosthetics are veiled through most of the film). She's been lovingly raised by Daniel (the excellent Luoyong Wang), whose devotion leads to his own abandonment, and whose story is far more compelling than Katie's.
The film's other adults are merely OK in mostly thankless roles -- Beau Bridges and Linda Hamilton as Katie's parents. Boorem is affecting when Katie, in her first day on the job, is overcome with emotion, but it's the character's only convincing scene.
The writer-director didn't want to make a documentary, but there's little doubt that a nonfiction film would have been more powerful than this strained drama, which offers a Malibu brat as the audience's point of identification. The heroine might draw other teens into the story; the film feels destined for classrooms as a recruitment tool for Operation Smile. It opens today in Los Angeles and San Francisco, adding New York and other markets in two weeks.
The only engaging elements of "Smile" are its sequences filmed on the Chinese mainland; it's the rare Western project to receive permits from Beijing. Kramer and DP Edward Pei offer intriguing glimpses of Shanghai and, especially, of the 2,000-year-old village of Jingxi. Scenes of the workaday village and its nightlife -- there's an open-air screening of "Cowboy and the Senorita" -- hold a strong fascination.
The same can't be said of the Malibu part of the story, complete with mother-daughter conversations about contraception while the waves roll in on their private beach.
Golden girl Katie (Mika Boorem, "Blue Crush") starts climbing out of her self-absorption when a student council adviser (Sean Astin) suggests the organization Doctor's Gift as a rewarding way to earn service credits. She becomes one of two kids from Malibu High chosen to participate in a mission to Shanghai.
Lin (Yi Ding), the Chinese teen girl Katie is destined to befriend, was abandoned as an infant for her disfiguring cleft lip (Stan Winston's prosthetics are veiled through most of the film). She's been lovingly raised by Daniel (the excellent Luoyong Wang), whose devotion leads to his own abandonment, and whose story is far more compelling than Katie's.
The film's other adults are merely OK in mostly thankless roles -- Beau Bridges and Linda Hamilton as Katie's parents. Boorem is affecting when Katie, in her first day on the job, is overcome with emotion, but it's the character's only convincing scene.
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