Movies
August, 1975
A teenage beauty pageant to pick California's choice as Young American Miss from 25 state-wide finalists is ostensibly the subject of Smile. Producer-director Michael Ritchie (who made The Candidate and Downhill Racer, still two of Robert Redford's best) has, in fact, created a funny, blistering attack on middle-American Philistinism as seen in the small town of Santa Rosa, which appears to be permanently blighted by a kind of inbred cultural smog. Though Ritchie and his scriptwriters occasional...
