Smiley Face: Critic Reviews

Despite its laid-back script, Smiley Face is as prankishly political as Mr. Araki's Doom Generation...

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.

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.

Basically a sketch padded out to feature length, the film constantly hovers on the edge between amiable and annoying.

In Faris, pic has a comedienne with the ability to wring endless variations on a limited theme (the 'I'm-so-baked' one) and she pretty much single-handedly compensates for anything lacking.

Gregg Araki's latest foray into the slacker underbelly of suburban L.A., Smiley Face, has a wonderful performance by Anna Faris and one of the all-time great stoner monologues in movie history.

A pure, mostly dumb comedy, it's the tale of one impossibly out-of-it girl, Anna Faris' Jane F., who spends her day stumbling from mishap to mishap in an effort to avoid her drug dealer's wrath.

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.

Faris's prodigious comic gifts can only go so far with a one-note premise.

A limp, unfunny time-waster.

Anna Faris receives a well-deserved spotlight role, and her funniest character to date, in director Gregg Araki's stoner comedy Smiley Face.

Smiley Face semble avoir ete ecrit en quatrieme vitesse sur un coin de table par un etudiant passant le plus clair de son temps cache a fumer autre chose que des cigarettes

This stoner romp is great farcical fun, even if it never seems to get anywhere.

Anna Faris is radiantly daft; she keeps the movie going all by herself.

...there's simply no overlooking the pervading vibe of silliness.

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.

Maybe this is funny if you're actually stoned. When taken sober, not so much.

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.

Anna Faris is alternately hilarious and annoying in this stoner comedy.

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.

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.

Smiley Face belongs to Faris, an actress who is some kind of treasure.

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.

Araki's latest is surprisingly mellow in its examination of ganja-fueled apathy.