‘Smiley Face’: Gregg Araki’s bizarre underrated stoner comedy
The stoner comedy subgenre took off in the 1970s with the movie Up in Smoke, starring comedy duo Cheech & Chong, which is credited as a pioneering entry to the canon. However, the stoner film took off in the 1990s and 2000s, coinciding with the rise of the slacker comedy subgenre, including titles like Mallrats and Clerks.
From Dude, Where’s My Car? to Pineapple Express, the 2000s gave us some of the most lauded stoner movies of all time, approved by those with a fondness for weed and those with little interest in the drug. A good stoner movie appeals to those outside of its subjects, revelling in bizarre, offbeat humour. One of the more underrated stoner comedies to emerge in the 2000s was Smiley Face, directed by Gregg Araki.
Araki was a key member of the ‘90s New Queer Cinema movement, releasing movies such as The Living End and Totally Fucked Up to cult acclaim. Using camp humour and shoegaze soundtracks, Araki’s movies expertly capture adolescence, queer relationships, and capitalist malaise. During this time, Araki mastered the ability to balance genuinely powerful social commentary within his films with fun, sexiness and violence, subsequently garnering him a dedicated following.
He entered darker territory with his heartbreaking 2004 work Mysterious Skin, which explored child abuse. Thus, three years later, he opted for a movie in the completely opposite direction. Smiley Face stars Anna Faris as a struggling actor, Jane, who spends her days smoking weed. On the day of an audition, she gets a terrible case of the munchies and indulges in a platter of cupcakes left in the fridge by her strange housemate, Steve.
Little does she know until several cupcakes have been devoured, Steve has laced his sweet treats with marijuana ahead of a movie marathon. Thus, the film follows an incredibly baked Faris as she deals with the day’s challenges, such as paying back her drug dealer, played by Adam Brody, who is wearing comically fake-looking dreadlocks and is plastered with fake tattoos.
From the start, Smiley Face is in-your-face stupid, but it is also highly entertaining. Faris plays her incredibly stoned character a little too convincingly, getting herself into weird situations such as accidentally stealing a first-edition copy of The Communist Manifesto. John Krasinski appears as a character named Brevin, a nerdy, incel-looking type who is infatuated with Jane, and Roscoe Lee Browne even cameos in a voiceover role that Jane hears in her head.
The movie is glaringly low budget, and the subtitles that appear throughout look as though they were whipped up using the first bland-looking font Araki could find. However, this isn’t simply bad filmmaking on Araki’s part – his previous work shows he is an incredibly gifted director. Rather, Araki revels in the lo-fi aesthetic of the movie, mirroring Jane’s lack of financial prosperity and security.
Araki doesn’t glorify drug use, either. While the movie is in no way anti-drug, the director highlights the pitifulness of Faris’ character, who loses all sense of normalcy due to being absolutely fried the whole time. Smiley Face is a complex take on the stoner comedy, although it might not appear so at first glance due to the sheer stupidity of the events that take place.
The director’s penchant for hiding potent social commentary among camp dialogue and surreal imagery within his oeuvre makes Smiley Face work so well. The movie presents the fun that can come with drug use while also warning of the dangers of taking it too far. While it is not the greatest thing Araki has ever made, Smiley Face is the perfect choice for a lazy Sunday evening viewing with your friends.
