
DATE: Wednesday, August 27, 1997            TAG: 9708270105

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E5   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: MOVIE REVIEW
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, MOVIE CRITIC 
                                            LENGTH:   51 lines

UNFUNNY "SMILE LIKE YOURS" BORN OF A MISTAKEN PREMISE

THAT BABY HAD BETTER look a lot like Greg Kinnear and Lauren Holly or else - or else, well, that's another movie.

``A Smile Like Yours'' is a romantic comedy about a couple trying to have a baby. It operates on the mistaken premise that fertility clinics, along with formidable-looking tongs and needles, are funny. Ask any of the millions of couples who can't have children and you'll find out just how comedic this subject is.

Just when we think that Lucy and Desi are about the only couple that could have brought this plot off, along comes a clip from the ``I Love Lucy'' show - just to rub in the fact that this bland treatment is so inferior to that kind of madcap comedy. It's the show when Lucy tells Desi she's going to have a baby. It makes Holly tear up. It makes us wish we could watch the TV rerun instead of staying for the rest of this movie.

The two leads are fine, with what they're allowed to play (they were also a couple in ``Sabrina''). Kinnear has a fine, boyish, everyguy approach to comedy. He's good at doing double-takes and gulping uncertainly. It's too bad that someone seems intent upon sabotaging his movie career - perhaps the era itself. In the 1940s age of screwball comedy, he would have been a big star by now.

Joan Cusack has a thankless role as the ``best friend'' - a woman who's out to win a mortician, and uses a rare perfume to do it.

Seemingly aware that the can't-have-a-baby plot isn't enough to sustain an entire film, there are several pointless subplots: The wife establishing her own business, the husband being pursued by a leggy co-worker (Jill Hennessy).

The only really funny segments in the film revolve around Marianne Muellerleile as the tough nurse at the fertility clinic.

Also look for France Nuyen as an ever-smiling doctor. Yes, that's the same actress who had ``Younger Than Springtime'' sung to her in ``South Pacific.''

``A Smile Like Yours'' is a pretty bland trifle. ILLUSTRATION: PARAMOUNT PICTURES

Lauren Holly and Greg Kinnear star in the romantic comedy ``A Smile

Like Yours.''

MOVIE REVIEW

``A Smile Like Yours''

Cast: Greg Kinnear, Lauren Holly, Joan Cusack, France Nuyen, Jill

Hennessy, Marianne Muellerleile

Director: Keith Samples

MPAA rating: R (language, sexual situation)

Mal's rating: *1/2