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There is a scene in Playing Mona Lisa that has Claire's (Alicia Witt) zany parents (Elliott Gould and Marlo Thomas) tripping on acid, by accident, in their home. The sequence is utterly strange, contemptibly unconvincing and, for the performers, humiliating as all get out. But that can be said for the movie at large, which heaps vast amounts of depressing nastiness on naïve Claire and then is unable to establish a modicum of comedic buoyancy. A lighter touch for this would-be screwball comedy was called for than what director Matthew Huffman gives it. It should be noted that Witt, so hateful as the antagonizing daughter on TV's Cybill, occasionally rises above the material and generates genuine sympathy, and she convincingly plays the brief classical piano parts herself (she is an accomplished pianist in addition to being a radiant actress). Brooke Langton, who tries her best to bring Claire out of her funk as her party-hopping best friend Sabrina, spices her few scenes with an innate, calculating sexiness. But a movie that gets its title from a lame gag recited in the film (it refers to the way single women are supposed to smile at men) is doomed from the start.