This movie is all over the place. One giant discombobulated stoner trip that goes from one obscure adventure to another. And you know what? It is quite a fun, odd journey. “Smiley Face” takes off in a great wind sprint, and ends in a stoner type of a stumble.
Jane (Anna Faris) is worse than your typical stoner. She is high before ten in the morning and eats her roommate Steve’s (Danny Masterson) pot-infused brownies. Now having a really bad experience, Jane devises a plan on how to replace his brownies by the end of the day before he gets even creepier or angrier than he already is. “Smiley Face” then proceeds to go on from one weird adventure to the next with Jane meeting many people along her aimless crusade.
I personally haven’t really seen many cater-to-the-stoner films in recent years outside of “Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle” but this film is hilarious. There are moments when we are inside Jane’s head and see how she perceives her surroundings which are unreal funny, such as when she starts up her car and goes nowhere while trying to back-up, with the walls slowly closing in, a ton of traffic surrounding, and an appearance by Satan. It is this visual style that makes this film so captivating, in a very non-serious way of course, because in general, for non-stoners, this could be far from a marvelous piece of captivating cinema.
Gregg Araki has crafted a zany and interesting look inside one woman’s very stoned mind. I am not into the stoner lifestyle that much, but I can’t help but really enjoy this film especially with a supporting cast that has to be one of the greatest mash-up of actors I have seen before. The cast includes Danny Masterson, John Krasinski (Jim from “The Office”), Jane Lynch, Danny Trejo, Adam Brody, John Cho, Carrot Top, and Brian Posehn. All of these actors add a little bit of extra zaniness to the already crazy story. For example, John Krasinski steals each scene by playing ultra nerd, Breven. He wears these giant coke bottle glasses and looks just a bit creepy but he does it in such a way that is just pure comedy. With the great supporting cast aside, the ending really weighs this film down. Unfortuantely it’s a strong effort with a weak resolution.
This is a decent diversion for those who are into comedies that are different than your standard fare. The visuals are great, the comedy is new and refreshing, but the ending is atrocious. Perhaps someone was smoking a bit too much of the weak-sauce story chronic because the film could’ve have been much better.
