Movie Maven

Directed by: Gregg Araki
Written by: Dylan Haggerty
Starring: Anna Faris, Danny Masterson, Adam Brody, Roscoe Lee Browne

I'll be seeing "Pineapple Express" this weekend, though mixed reviews fill me with trepidation about relinquishing my precious $10. But I'm too intrigued to see a stoner/action flick to not take the risk.

I am a connoisseur of the stoner flick, ever since I was a freshman in college, spending evenings in my buddy's apartment "chillaxing" in her inflatable chair and watching "Half Baked." After deciding to see "Express" this weekend, I was inspired to watch "Smiley Face," a movie that was completely ignored when it came out, but which I had heard about from several people as the best stoner movie action around.

A homage of true pot cinema, it is the story of Jane F., who gets really baked off of her roommates cupcakes, and then must travel to a hemp festival to convince her dealer not to take her furniture cause she hasn't paid for her drugs, because she spent all her money on this really awesome sleep number bed, which is the one thing she really doesn't want her dealer to take, and she also has to pay the power bill, and buy enough pot to remake the pot cupcakes that her roommate made so he doesn't know she ate them.

So, basically, the story is a story your buddy would tell you if she was high and you were chillaxing on her inflatable chair, Supertramp playing gently in the background.

The film is a glorious meandering through Los Angeles, a place that in itself looks like a bad trip. Faris is wonderful precisely because she doesn't at all seem concerned with seeming either pretty or likeable. Her hair looks like it hasn't been washed in a few days; her eyes are perpetually bloodshot and her movements are slow and deliberate without ever seeming graceful. Her inner monologue is a masterpiece of stoner logic; in one delightful scene she decides that owning a picture of President Garfield to display her love of lasagna would be "totally meta."

When you actually think through what happens in "Smiley Face" you don't come up with much. But that's actually a good thing. Weed is special in that it makes every movement of your body seem like a momentous, arduous task, so it makes sense that taking a bus across town to Venice Beach could be construed as an epic rivaling "The Odyssey."

Faris leads, or rather is followed by, a sparkling supporting cast, including ur-straight man John Krasinski, post-"OC" Adam Brody as a pot dealer with hilarious rasta dreds, and Roscoe Lee Brown as both the narrator and existential muser within Jane's toked-out soul.

The most fascinating part of "Smiley Face" is really the paradox of portraying marijuana in film. It's hardly a social commentary on drug use: pot is demonstrated as a funny, and primarily harmless drug that just makes people stupid for a little while. When Jane asks if not paying back her dealer Steve will get her killed, Steve scoffs. "Oh, come on Jane, I deal weed. I'm not gonna break your kneecaps. At the most I'll, I dunno, take your furniture or something."

But there is something to be said for how pot also can make you extremely unlikeable once you've had too much. No one likes the lazy, self-involved idiot who borrows your money and doesn't pay the power bill cause she spent it all on weed. So we don't mind when Jane gets her comeuppance for her escapades at the end of that sun-drenched day in Los Angeles. Though we do hope that maybe she'll replace her furniture with inflatable chairs.