Smile Again, Jenny Lee
“Smile Again, Jenny Lee,” a cringe-inducing, bloated story about a bratty tennis star in search of her long-lost father, is painful to watch, because it feels like a passion project in which everyone is trying to serve aces, yet all we get are double faults.
The story, set in San Francisco, begins as tennis hot shot Jenny (Monique Hafen), one of the most uninteresting and unappealing characters you will ever meet, gets mysteriously attacked, which puts an end to her lucrative career. Jenny lobs one obnoxious remark after the other, for no apparent reason, and we fantasize about lobbing a tennis ball into her mouth to keep her quiet.
Thanks to her agent making off with all her earnings, Jenny inexplicably decides to track down her missing-in-action, deadbeat father to secure money for her tennis comeback. Along for the ride is an amnesiac gentleman whom Jenny meets, and their boring search for the father anchors the film, or perhaps more precisely, puts an anchor around the movie’s neck.
Rarely will you see movie music make the actors look so foolish. There is a constant piano cue that is more appropriate for a romantic drama (there is no romance here), but the music shows up whether Jenny is doing detective work, arguing with someone or having banal conversations, of which there are many.
Director Carlo Caldana, who based the dim script on his novel, employs an impressive array of San Francisco locations, but the characters and story feel as if they are from a distant place. The overly expository dialogue is flat as a Wimbledon court, and the editing is particularly sloppy. (Only Safiya Fredericks, who appears in one scene as a grouchy police inspector, infuses some life into the proceedings.)
It’s clear that Caldana is coming from an earnest place, so while watching, we hope that “Smile Again” somehow springs to life. But unfortunately, Caldana is too close to his own work, and his film ends up on the losing end. Game, set, match.