Smiley Face (2007)
Smiley Face is refreshingly disinterested in pleasing me, the viewer. That always pleases me. Smiley Face stars Anna Faris, and isn’t a sequel to Scary Movie, another sign of possible good things to come. The film was also directed by Greg Araki, who’s coming off a major career redefining best with the child abuse film Mysterious Skin. Again, so far, so good. Faris plays Jane F. (last name never supplied), a stoner who accidentally eats a shit load of pot cup cakes and has to go on a journey to pay a bill and talk a drug dealer (an amusing Adam Brody) out of confiscating her furniture; particularly her huge, expensive bed, the source of her lack of fundage to begin with. Hijinks and cameos ensue, justifying little of the opening promise.
I think it’s because I’m tired of stoner movies. The humor, the structure, and the result of these films are almost always the same. Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle earned mild points by putting its heroes on a quest to get stoned, as opposed to going on a quest stoned (yes, that counts as subversion in this genre.) Otherwise, I’m afraid I just don’t care, the adventures are almost always too over the top and self-congratulatory, and you know exactly where you are twenty minutes into any of these films. To call most of these movies one joke is to be kind, to assume that “damn, she’s really stoned” rates as a single joke. Filmmakers need to dial these things back a little. Smiley Face, for example, shouldn’t turn into a bunch of madness about stealing the Communist Manifesto, it should instead actually stick with the idea of trying to pay a bill ridiculously stoned.
Anna Faris is wonderful, committed; she dives in and never tells you she’s above the material, though she is. Someone, somewhere, please stop underrating this talented actress, and give her something that she can really do something with. Araki would appear to be blowing off steam after the darkness of Skin, and I don’t begrudge him that, but it doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll enjoy his movie. The funniest line of the film is “I’m taking a shit.” I just saved you a Netflix envelope.
★★
January 22nd, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Anna Farris is awesome. First of all, it’s just nice to see any woman, let alone a hot one, embrace farce so wholeheartedly.
January 22nd, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Cut the movie back to 30 minutes or maybe even 45 and it would’ve been terrific.
Farris was pretty spectacular (and yeah, it’s always fun seeing a cute girl farcing it up), but the film kind of ran out of gas around her before it ever makes it back to the solid Roscoe Lee Browne material it opens with.
I liked it well enough at the time, but the memory fades into a pot fueled haze…
January 23rd, 2008 at 3:54 pm
I think I stand a better chance of fathering a child with Anna Faris than I do actually sitting through a movie directed by Gregg Araki. Too bad, this sounds like it might have been the one to make me interested.
January 23rd, 2008 at 6:23 pm
I loved Mysterious Skin, but otherwise I understand what you’re saying Joe. Before that I don’t think I ever finished an Araki film.
January 23rd, 2008 at 6:51 pm
“I think I stand a better chance of fathering a child with Anna Faris than I do actually sitting through a movie directed by Gregg Araki.” Aahahhahah.
I know what you’re saying Joe. I still haven’t seen Mysterious Skin for that reason (something I plan to fix thanks to Chuck and others), but I have to say that people who don’t generally like Araki might still find something to like with Smiley Face.
The first 20 or 30 minutes are actually very very funny. It isn’t able to keep up the comic pace for long, but it’s not an unpleasant experience.