This stoner romp is great farcical fun, even if it never seems to get anywhere.
Comment
03/20/08
Smiley Face (2007)
67 %
Reviews Counted: 30 Fresh: 20 Rotten:10 Average Rating: 5.9/10
Consensus:
Although many of the jokes have been done before, Anna Faris's bright performance and Gregg Araki's sharp direction make Smiley Face more than your average stoner comedy.
Runtime: 88 mins
Synopsis: Jane F., an unsuccessful slacker actress, is having a bad day. And it’s getting more outrageous and comically surreal by the minute. Smiley Face is a freewheeling, cinematically stylized After Hours for the new millennium. Jane’s misadventures begin when she treats herself to a batch of... [More]
Genre: Comedies
Starring: Anna Faris, Adam Brody, John Krasinski, Danny Masterson, Jane Lynch
Director: Gregg Araki
Screenwriter: Dylan Haggerty
Producer: Steve Golin, Kevin Turen
Composer: David Kitay
Producer: Alix Madigan-Yorkin
Screenwriter: Dylan Haggerty
Producer: Steve Golin, Kevin Turen
Composer: David Kitay
Producer: Alix Madigan-Yorkin
Reviews
Anna Faris is radiantly daft; she keeps the movie going all by herself.
01/18/08
Despite its laid-back script, Smiley Face is as prankishly political as Mr. Araki's Doom Generation...
12/28/07
Top Critic
Dylan Haggerty has written an eleventh-hour candidate for the funniest movie of 2007, that Gregg Araki has directed his finest film since 1997's Nowhere, and that Faris, flawless, rocks their inspired idiot odyssey in a virtuoso comedic turn.
12/28/07
Maybe this is funny if you're actually stoned. When taken sober, not so much.
12/26/07
Working from a script by TV actor Dylan Haggerty, [director] Araki manages to capture what he's been trying to say all along about the lives of the stoned and indifferent with the kind of effortlessness those earlier attempts sorely lacked.
12/26/07
It's a fittingly loose, shambling little nothing of a comedy that's occasionally inspired, but at least a draft or two short of its potential. Still, it's a pleasure to watch Faris wander slack-jawed through a surreal day in Los Angeles.
12/26/07
One shudders to think what Smiley Face might have been with someone like Paris Hilton in the role. But Faris has this character -- a bright, sweet college graduate with a temporarily incapacitated brain -- down perfect.
12/26/07
Anna Faris is alternately hilarious and annoying in this stoner comedy.
12/23/07
This is a full-force, all-purpose performance by Faris with the kind of grace that would get winks from the likes of silent screen greats.
12/21/07
Smiley Face belongs to Faris, an actress who is some kind of treasure.
12/21/07
Faris gamely goes Garbo and Lombard one better, taking her cute little firecracker looks and being willing to go full-out to appear appropriately, hilariously awful when the story calls for it.
12/21/07
The real reason to invest your time is Anna Faris, America’s best-kept comedy secret and long overdue for the kind of major stardom her male counterparts enjoy as a matter of course.
12/20/07
Araki's latest is surprisingly mellow in its examination of ganja-fueled apathy.
12/19/07
Basically a sketch padded out to feature length, the film constantly hovers on the edge between amiable and annoying.
12/17/07
A tedious, empty-headed stoner film focusing on a female pothead, who's limited to one facial expression and lines such as "I'm totally vibing on you, dude," has arrived just in time to greet the New Year. Santa must have thought we were very, very bad.
12/13/07
A fast-moving, surprisingly varied take on a pretty standard concept: It’s basically Martin Scorsese’s After Hours Lite, as told by Cheech and Chong.
11/19/07
An unabashed valentine to Anna Faris, an opportunity for the actress to show that she can carry a movie composed of often hilarious nonstop misadventures.
11/16/07
Top Critic
With a madcap script by Dylan Haggerty and a bubbly and inventive performance from Anna Faris, as well as a succinct running time, Smiley Face manages to sustain itself, and only the hard-hearted and humorless would feel that it overstays its welcome.
11/16/07
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