'Smile' rehashes sixth-grade Sex Ed

Back in 6th grade, when I went through sex education with a dozen other embarrassed pre-adolescents, I may have found the informational videos on how babies are made interesting.

REVIEW
	A Smile Like Yours At Showcase

But now well-informed about the details of life, I could care less about the boring and asinine film, "A Smile Like Yours," which is nothing more than a stylized Sex Ed video.

"A Smile Like Yours" attempts to play off the sexual chemistry between Greg Kinnear and Lauren Holly to provide a touching romantic comedy.

The two look at each other with lovey-dovey eyes, and they try to prove who loves whom more, butchering every romantic-comedy cliché ever written. But in the end, their charm and cuteness become disgustingly overwhelming; and as with Tickle-Me-Elmo dolls, you just want to kill them.

Kinnear and Holly play a couple who are desperately trying to have a baby. Holly tries to increase their chances by mixing up aphrodisiacs in perfume and surprising Kinnear, a construction worker, at odd times.

By dabbing on the secret scent and having sex in random places (a sports stadium, an elevator, a bathroom in a pool hall), her chances of conceiving are supposed to increase.

Of course, these strange scenes of seduction are incredibly pointless and grueling to watch. They take up most of the movie, and as this is going on, there is close to no plot advancement or character development.

When Holly's character takes her husband's sperm in to be analyzed (which, incidentally, is obtained by some extremely unorthodox means), she finds out that he has "lazy swimmers."

The rest of the movie is devoted to the couple's trials and tribulations at a fertility clinic.

Scenes of Holly being probed with what looks like heavy machinery and Kinnear in a "Masturbatorium" fall far short of interesting, and they just reaffirm the movie's stupidity.

The movie's pace is slow while the flat and skimpy plot is spread incredibly thin. Nothing really happens that sparks any audience interest, and the climax of the film is nonexistent. What results is a dull, monotonous cheese-fest that moves just like the voice of the teacher from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off."

The only highlight of the movie would have to be Joan Cusack ("Grosse Pointe Blank") who plays the best-friend role. Holly and Cusack own a quaint little shop in San Francisco that sells perfumes and such.

Cusack is hilarious as the desperately horny friend who has her eyes set on a mortician. Cusack, who always delivers solid performances in supporting roles, once again shows why she is one of the most underrated actresses in Hollywood.

Otherwise, audiences sit through nearly two hours of learning the role of fallopian tubes and ovaries during conception, what goes on at fertility clinics, just what a Masturbatorium looks like and what a bad movie really is.

"A Smile Like Yours" might have been an interesting way of teaching kids about how babies are made. But watching this tedious, mind-numbing film is the ultimate test of patience - for those who already know all this stuff.

Smile, honey. I have "lazy swimmers."

09-08-97