Review of Smiley Face (2007) by Paul C — 04 Aug 2010

I've only seen two Gregg Araki movies in the past, THE DOOM GENERATION, which I loathed, and MYSTERIOUS SKIN, which I loved. THE DOOM GENERATION was abominable, bad art created by what one would guess is a very angry teenager trying to get back at mommy and daddy, but it came early in Araki's career, when he still headed his movies with immature declarations of intent on the poster with phrases like "An irresponsible movie by Gregg Araki" or "A heterosexual movie by Gregg Araki." MYSTERIOUS SKIN is a more recent film, and a much more mature one that retains Araki's quirks as a director, but tosses out his more immature tendencies. SMILEY FACE was Araki's follow-up to MYSTERIOUS SKIN, so I was naturally interested. Araki following up a grim movie like MYSTERIOUS SKIN with what appeared to be a light stoner comedy filled with laughs and weed seemed like a good time to me.

The opening to SMILEY FACE is a promising one, we get Anna Faris (an actress I love, even when she's in movies that suck) sitting on a Ferris wheel talking with the film's narrator, the late Roscoe Lee Brown, whose voice she hears and recognizes outright. She's stuck on the Ferris wheel, and the movie flashes back to show us how she got there. Cue a fun, colorful opening credit sequence that boasts a cast with the likes of Jane Lynch, Danny Trejo, John Cho, Adam Brody, and Brian Posehn among others, set to a bizarre animation that seems to promise an insane stoner adventure. Unfortunately Araki doesn't deliver the goods. While SMILEY FACE isn't your typical stoner comedy in that it has a female lead and a plot that doesn't go the way you think it will, it can't really sell you on anything that's going on. Basically, what happens is that Faris plays an apathetic stoner in L.A. who gets really high on her creepy alleged skullfucker roommate's pot-infused cupcakes, sending her on an unintentional rampage of mischief across the city. Something the movie really gets right is stoner logic, it's fun to watch Faris' character mentally bounce between her irrational fears and impulsive desires. The movie just doesn't do a good job of selling these situations to you, which is really bad when you have a film that is episodic in nature. A lot of things involve her stumbling into a bad situation, only to get out of it by randomly running away. This could have been hilarious, and her character could have been sold to us as simply paranoid and, um, really high, but the world does genuinely seem to be out to get her, which makes the movie less interesting and less funny, even though it's trying to be. Really SMILEY FACE could best be described as a collection of bits thrown at a wall, but not much of it sticks, and the bits that do aren't clinging too well.

I think if SMILEY FACE has shown me anything, it's that Gregg Araki can do drama very, very well, but he can't really sell comedy. For a guy who has professed his love of screwball comedies and their influence on his work, his quirky sense of humor doesn't really come across too well. THE DOOM GENERATION is painfully unfunny, as it tries too hard to do the dark humor thing while being edgy at the same time, and it all falls flat on its gothed-up face. SMILEY FACE isn't trying to make the statement that THE DOOM GENERATION is, so it's much easier to take, but it's broken at the end of the day. Araki clearly prefers making these kinds of films, but the meaty dramas are where it's at for him. I love the concepts at play in SMILEY FACE, it's just that we have a classic case of the wrong marriage of material and director.