O Doce Sabor de um Sorriso

This is a great Film, not only is it a fast moving film, but it also shows how alcohol can ruin someone's life and what effects it will have not only on themselves but also on those around her. It has a great mother daughter relationship that is being tested from the beginning of the movie. This movie also shows the support of her good friends and how much they are will to put up with! This movie was ahead of it time for when it came out in the early 80's and touched on a lot of subjects that were not discussed even for 1981!! Marsha Mason plays a woman with a drinking problem, has a gay best friend and a friend who is obsessed with her looks, she is divorced and she is not the parent who raised her daughter because of her alcohol problems. Kristy McNichol plays the daughter who really only wants her mother to notice her and pay attention to her.

Yes, it maybe somewhat similar to The Goodbye Girl but there are some major differences. It also has great story and moves along fast, is funny, and at one point you really do not like Marsha Mason character, which is what a good movie does!!! But this is a movie you need to see for yourself and make your mind up!!

Comedy-drama from writer Neil Simon, an expansion of his unsuccessful play "The Gingerbread Lady", has Marsha Mason playing an alcoholic Broadway star just checking out of rehab and back into reality when her estranged teenage daughter tells her she wants the two to be roommates. Fairly lively, bitchy film full of wisecracks and tears becomes flabby in the second and third acts, mostly due to poor editing which might have eliminated the dross (and a few side-plots that lead nowhere). Mason performs one too many dramatic monologues on the telephone, and there's six minutes of wasted film involving two college guys trying to pick up Mason and daughter Kristy McNichol at a health food restaurant. The movie has been designed to show off Mason's range (her vulnerability, her wiseass humor, her pathos, etc.). She's striking walking around New York City in her cape, less so when she's sniffling or giving an actors' seminar on the phone. Mason matches up perfectly with McNichol, but 17-year-old Kristy is shunted off to the side (and I disliked the padded sequence where she gets drunk like mamma). There are some fine moments here, but the picture gets off to a really bad start with an excruciating scene between James Coco and a Hispanic delivery boy. Simon takes one cheap shot after another, and yet the film isn't really about alcoholism at all, it's about masochistic behavior. **1/2 from ****

Marsha Mason's performance of a lifetime - snubbed by the academy. This was by far her best performance since The Goodbye Girl. This film was not your ordinary Niel Simon flick. A tour-de-force with all the elements: Tears, Laughter, and each character going through their own seperate turmoil. James Coco is great as the gay wannabe actor/best friend. Joan Hackett is brilliant as Toby Landau, the aging Park Avenue beauty, who dreads growing old. Ms. Hackett won a Golden Globe for her performance in this film. Oscar nominations for Mason, Hackett, and Coco. Too bad none of them won.

Much has been written over the years regarding the 'one-note" performances of Marsha Mason. Four of these "one-note" performances earned Mason Oscar nominations and IMO this is the best of those four. ONLY WHEN I LAUGH is Neil Simon's big screen re-working of his own play THE GINGERBREAD LADY. Marsha Mason plays Georgia Hines, an actress recently released from rehab, trying to get her career going again, trying to re-establish a relationship with her daughter (Kristy McNichol) and trying to stay sober and not really doing a great job with any of them. Mason hits all the right notes here and makes Georgia a flawed and realistic human being. Some of Mason's best moments involve no dialogue at all...there is a wonderful scene about 2/3 of the way through the film where an on-the-edge Georgia is walking the streets of Manhattan around dusk and it seem like every other storefront she passes is a bar. She then stops at an interior pay phone to call her doctor from rehab; however, he is not present and Georgia doesn't want to talk to the doctor who does answer the phone. This scene is extremely well-played by Mason and I think it's the scene that probably nailed the Oscar nomination for her. Kristy McNichol charms, as always, as Polly, Georgia's self-sufficient daughter who still yearns to be Mommie's little girl sometimes. James Coco and Joan Hackett also deliver Oscar nominated performances as Georgia's best friends, Jimmy, an unemployed actor and Toby, a vain, society beauty trying to cope with the fact that her best years have passed her by. Hackett is particularly impressive as the fading beauty whose fragile ego doesn't keep her from kicking Georgia in the ass when she needs it. Though Simon definitely has stronger screenplays under his belt, ONLY WHEN I LAUGH is worth seeing if for no other reason, the strong performances by the four leads, three of which earned Oscar nominations.

Another marvelous Marsha Mason performance as a recently returning actress from rehabilitation.

Neil Simon's script is as crisp and vivid as ever. Too bad that both Miss Mason and Diane Keaton's performance in "Reds" were overlooked by the Academy when the Oscar went to the sentimental Katharine Hepburn for "On Golden Pond." Academy members were apparently voting for Henry Fonda for best actor in record numbers and just went down the line for Hepburn as well. What a shame.

The film deals with the frustrations and hopes of 3 people and that doesn't even include a worthy performance by Kristy McNichol as the daughter.

As the gay actor, desperately trying to succeed, the late James Coco was excellent. In the supporting category, he is well matched by the late Joan Hackett, tremendous as Mason's best friend, whose marriage is apparently falling apart.Those glittering grayish clothes that she wore expressed her emotions so well. No one could also wear those poncho outfits that Mason wore. They depicted a troubled, but independent lady.

This is an excellent case study of 3 friends in turmoil and how they try to cope while supporting each other emotionally. Trouble is that Georgia (Marsha Mason) allows herself to fall back and drink again. She says that as a youngster she wanted to be another Susan Hayward. She sure is crying tomorrow and smashing up her life.