`A SMILE LIKE YOURS' LABORS IN ATTEMPT TO GET LAUGHS.

Byline: Amy Dawes Daily News Film Critic

A bland, sporadically amusing trifle that tries to find comedy in the plight of a devoted young couple (Greg Kinnear and Lauren Holly) who are having trouble getting pregnant, ``A Smile Like Yours'' lacks the wit and comic madness that it would have required to succeed.

Kinnear plays Danny, who builds elevators for construction sites, and Holly plays his wife, Jennifer, who has a thing about seducing him in those elevators.

Jennifer has a fragrance company where she's trying to come up with a killer aphrodisiac. Each time she mixes up another combination, she comes after her hubby at work, determined to give the formula a pronto test.

On the upside, the elevator-aphrodisiac ploy always seems to work, which brings them a lot of envious attention from Danny's co-workers, who are obliged to observe. On the downside, Jennifer, who desperately wants to be a mom, isn't getting pregnant.

Soon they're off to a fertility clinic. ``We want to have a baby!'' Jennifer gushes to the sumo wrestler-sized nurse (Marianne Muellerleile) who awaits them. (``Isn't that nice?'' she says sourly.)

But while there are indeed a few juvenile areas of amusement to be exploited in a fertility clinic, the whole ordeal, as seen here, can generally be summed up as tedious and humiliating.

First-time director Samples tries to inject wacky humor, without much success. And his idea of pacing is akin to waiting for a download from the Internet.

It says something that the most affecting moment in the movie comes in a classic clip from the TV show ``I Love Lucy,'' when Lucy springs on Ricky the news that she's pregnant during his nightclub act.

As for Jennifer and Danny, when their stalled breeding attempt begins to fray their marriage, interlopers start to come between them, including Jill Hennessy (TV's ``Law & Order'') in the movie's one intriguing performance as a head-turning architect who pursues Danny.

These are the kind of everyday, every-couple problems that could gain big-screen momentum only in the hands of the most gifted, charismatic performers and cleverest writers. Neither of those elements are on hand.

Kinnear and Holly, previously seen as a couple in ``Sabrina,'' come across as thoroughly bland and sweet - not nearly as manic or twisted as they'd have to be to make this material fly.

Even Samples, who's the former chief executive of Rysher, the film production company that's behind this project, would have been well-advised to invest himself in material that was edgier and more original than this.

Apparently, the movie got made with a little help from his friends, including those whose projects Samples backed at Rysher.

Among them are executive producer Robert Harling (who got his first directing shot on Rysher's ``Evening Star''), whose pal Shirley MacLaine makes a brief, unbilled appearance as Danny's raunchy, frank-speaking mother-in-law.

THE FACTS

The film: ``A Smile Like Yours'' (R; frank sexuality).

The stars: Greg Kinnear, Lauren Holly, Joan Cusack, Jay Thomas, Jill Hennessy.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Keith Samples. Screenplay by Kevin Meyer and Keith Samples. Produced by David Kirkpatrick and Tony Amatullo. Executive producer, Robert Harling. Released by Paramount Pictures.

Running time: One hour, 41 minutes.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating: Two Stars.

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Photo

Photo: Greg Kinnear and Lauren Holly don't come across nearly as manic or twisted as they'd have to be to make ``A Smile Like Yours'' fly.