Smile Tries to Encourage Teens to Take Charitable Action

The other day, we sat down to watch The 12 Dogs of Christmas, which I had rented from Netflix. One of the previews, for a movie called Smile, caught my mom’s eye, so I went to see whether I could put it in my queue and discovered that it was available for Instant Viewing. So we got to watch it even more quickly than she’d anticipated.

Smile is the lone film project of writer-director Jeffrey Kramer, and it seems to have been produced mainly for viewing in high school classrooms. Like the old after-school specials, this is a movie with a message, and it’s really more like three messages. Primarily: Don’t be apathetic. You may live in a world of fancy cars and swimming pools, but there are many people throughout the world who are not so privileged. Sprinkled in are messages about not being ashamed of one’s appearance and not becoming sexually active just because one‘s peers seem to expect it.

The protagonist is Katie (Mika Boorem), a pampered teenager with a long term boyfriend (the rather obnoxious Chris, played by Erik von Detten) who begins to wonder if there’s more to life after her teacher Mr. Matthews (Sean Astin) hands her a pamphlet about Doctor’s Gift, a charity that provides operations for children with deformities. Eventually, she decides to go on the trip to China, along with her smitten classmate Ted (Jonathon Trent), who happens to be king of community service and is noticeably nicer than Chris, who is pressuring her to take their relationship to the next level. While there, she particularly hopes to meet Lin (Yi Ding), a young woman who shares her birthday and who has spent her life keeping her face covered due to a facial abnormality.

I recognize many of the actors in this film: Boorem from a memorable guest stint on Touched By An Angel lasting three episodes; von Detten from The Princess Diaries (in which he played practically the same character); Cheri Oteri (the nurse who oversees Katie and Ted once they reach China) from Saturday Night Live; Beau Bridges from any number of roles, most recently in my favorite episode of Desperate Housewives; Linda Hamilton from Terminator and Beauty and the Beast; and, of course, Astin from Lord of the Rings. While this movie undeniably has heart, I think it also suffers from poor direction and dialogue, because every one of these accomplished actors comes across as something of a novice here.

Bridges is the least jarring, but that’s probably because his character, Katie’s dad, is so level-headed. The movie is filled with angry outbursts followed by awkward pauses, and much of the dialogue is repetitive. Katie, for instance, must mention about five times how unreasonable Chris is for being annoyed with her for keeping him waiting in his car for 15 minutes after school (though, in her description, it’s always reduced to “one or two”). Chris is set up from this moment as the Evil Boyfriend, but frankly, I’d be a little irritated too. Couldn’t she have at least called him to let him know she’d be late? It seems a little unfair to pin all the blame for the incident on him, noble as her reasons were for staying.

Boorem and Hamilton, as Katie’s mother, are the worst offenders when it comes to getting huffy or screechy, and it’s especially jarring when they argue with each other because neither responds quickly enough to make it seem like a natural conversation. Astin’s role is briefer than I imagined it would be, since he doesn’t join his two students in Shanghai. For the most part, he’s fine, but there’s something very odd about his delivery in the flashback scene in which Lin and her father arrive too late for the surgery. He’s intended to come across as sympathetic, but instead he seems condescendingly incredulous, as in, “What’s the matter with you showing up here now? All the doctors went home!”

Oddly, I generally prefer the performances of the actors I don’t recognize: Trent as Good Potential Boyfriend Ted and especially Ding as the sweet, sheltered Lin, but most of all Luoyong Wang as her father Daniel. From the beginning of the movie, his story is interspersed with Katie’s. We first see him finding Lin as an infant, then we witness the disastrous seventh birthday party when his wife decides that she and their son can no longer share this home with Lin, whom she views as an interloper. As Lin nears adulthood, we see him continue to nurture his adoptive daughter, even as he grows frustrated with her fear of having the operation that would allow her to live a more normal life.

Generally, I prefer these scenes to Katie’s, even though many of them are subtitled and even though Daniel’s wife, while clearly not giving Lin a proper chance, may have had a point about his giving her preferential treatment. We don’t really see enough of the family dynamics to be certain. Nonetheless, he reminds me of Mr. Kwon, the Korean fisherman and adoptive father of Jin who is one of my favorite flashback characters on LOST, and I find him the most endearing character in the movie.

I don’t know how effective this movie is in convincing teenagers to get involved in charitable causes; I suspect many will find it hokey, but if it stirs even a few into action, then it’s a worthwhile movie, stilted dialogue and all.