SMILEY FACE: The Anna Faris Problem

Smiley Face (2007) – Directed by Gregg Araki – Starring Anna Faris, Danny Masterson, Adam Brody, John Krasinski, Jayma Mays, Marion Ross, Jane Lynch, John Cho, Danny Trejo, and Roscoe Lee Browne.

So if you’re a regular reader of the Anxiety you might be wondering why I’m reviewing a stoner comedy from 2007 in the middle of Catching Up with 2011 Month. The answer is not that I have run out of 2011 movies to watch. And while, yes, it is true that I’m caught between Netflix days (Frontier in Space and Super 8 have gone back, Fright Night and Attack the Block have yet to arrive), this review stems from a review of SMILEY FACE written by pal Derrick Ferguson over at The Ferguson Theater, a site you should be reading. (Derrick is also a writer of books that you should be reading.) This led to a comment by me over on Facebook that Anna Faris confounds me – sometimes I adore her and sometimes I can’t stand her.

And that’s what’s know as the Anna Faris Problem in my overworked head. Usually, with actors, while you may occasionally like or dislike their movie, you can say that you generally like or dislike them. It’s only recently that Adam Sandler has gone from an actor I like to one I don’t, despite the fact that he’s been in lots of movies I couldn’t stand. Despite the fact that Jay Baruchel has the single most annoying voice in the history of the world, I loved How to Train Your Dragon, which has him talking in nearly every scene.

But Anna Faris totally and completely confounds me. I want to like her, because she has the great vibe to her, but sometimes … sometimes just having her on my TV screen is enough to make me want to do the dishes. It can even happen with the same role – as much as I love her in Scary Movie and Scary Movie 2, I found her incredibly tedious in 3 and 4. I was incredibly psyched for Waiting, but found her and the movie wanting. I watched literally 3 minutes of Take Me Home Tonight before shutting it off, and she was nearly as annoying as Topher Grace during that time, which is quite the accomplishment. I had hoped she’d be entertaining enough to keep me interested, but it wasn’t to be. (And yes, feel free to hate on me for watching a movie for three minutes, declaring it sucks, and deciding to give American Pickers a chance, instead. Which was also kinda annoying.)

When Derrick reviewed SMILEY FACE and I let all of this out, he offered a friendly challenge – if I watched it and hated it, he’d watch a movie of my choosing to watch and review over at The Ferguson Theater. Since Netflix Streaming had SMILEY FACE available, it didn’t take too long to get to it.

The good news is that Derrick won’t have to review a movie of my choosing because I don’t hate SMILEY FACE. I didn’t love it, either, but there is one incontrovertible thing I did absolutely love about the movie …

Yup. Anna Faris.

Faris is so incredibly funny in SMILEY that it’s the performance I’ve always wanted to see her in. It’s the kind of performance that reminds you how awesome she can be when she’s on, even when the material is rather weak.

She plays Jane F, a stoner who spends the day, well, really, really stoned. The film opens with her stuck on a ferris wheel, talking to the disembodied voice of the great Roscoe Lee Browne, and then we spend much of the rest of the movie catching up to this moment. The film itself isn’t very good – she has a series of misadventures with a bunch of different guys as she tries to reach the Venice Pot Fesitval to pay back her dealer (an awful Adam Brody). Everything is set in motion when she eats her roommate Steve’s cupcakes (Danny Masterson) even though there was a note saying not to eat them. Too late, she realizes they’re pot cupcakes, so comes up with a list of the day’s activities: she needs to make Steve some new cupcakes, go to her acting audition, and pay off her dealer.

All of this means we basically spend 90 minutes watching a stoner make a series of bad decisions. Faris is really hilarious and totally committed to the role, but the rest of the film around her just doesn’t work all that much for me. When she’s waxing philosophical on the munchies, I’m engaged. When she’s pounding Doritos and sucking down orange juice from the mother (Marion Ross) of one of her ex-professors who thinks she’s someone else, I’m bored.

There’s a ton of guest stars here. Some (like John Cho and Roscoe Lee Browne) are good. Some (like Jane Lynch and Brian Posehn) are wasted.

Some of the scenes are really funny. Some aren’t. Luckily, nothing lasts too long as director Gregg Araki keeps things moving along at a pretty good clip. Strangely, I don’t really like any other character in the movie, or think they add much of anything. The point of everyone else is basically to play straight man to Jane’s stoner high jinks, and the result is a movie that’s funnier when Jane is by herself rather than when she’s interacting with other people.

I generally don’t like stoner comedies and SMILEY FACE isn’t going to change my mind on the genre, but Faris’ performance makes this a film worth watching. When we get a montage of how Brevin (John Krasinski) falls in love with her, and we see her basically eating chips or passed out on the couch covered in chips, I can totally see why he fell in love with her. Jane is one of those girls you meet every so often who’s a total wreck and yet also totally captivating. She’s the kind of girl all of your girlfriends will tell you doesn’t deserve you, and you’ll nod and agree when they say it, but it won’t matter. Once a girl like that hooks you, you’re stuck.

TREASURE PLANET: Of Duplicitous Cyborgs, Bad Haircuts, and More Retro-Future Sci-Fi

Treasure Planet (2002) – The 43rd Walt Disney Animated Feature – Directed by Ron Clements and John Musker – Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Brian Murray, David Hyde-Pierce, Emma Thompson, Martin Short, Laurie Metcalf, Michael Wincott, Roscoe Lee Browne, and Dane A. Davis.

I want to like TREASURE PLANET. I want to be able to applaud Disney for making a non-animal signing sci-fi flick, or hate it for utterly failing to deliver on the concept, but unfortunately TREASURE PLANET is just … so … mediocre that it’s hard to get worked up about it for good or bad.

Where PLANET fails is the story. The outline – kid gets a treasure map, goes looking for it on a ship full of disguised pirates, deals with daddy issues, gets betrayed by surrogate daddy figure, finds treasure, loses treasure, gains respect and friendship and purpose – is fine but there’s just no emotional impact to this story at all.

Jim Hawkins is a trouble-making teen who joyrides on a techno-windsurfing machine in restricted areas that get him arrested and dragged home by the cops to his embarrassed, frustrated mother. It’s hard to take Jim seriously because 1. his mom is busting her ass running her inn and he doesn’t appreciate her, and 2. he’s got a ridiculous haircut.

There are 3 things that always kill science-fiction movies by making them look silly and dated. They are as follows:

1. Music
2. Clothes
3. Hair

If you’re doing a futuristic sci-fi movie and you stray from what is a recognized classic look, your movie is going to have a distracting look. Just don’t do it. If you’ve got a scene set in a bar in the future and you fill it with stupid electronica songs, no one is ever going to believe it’s a real future because no one will ever believe electronica is awesome enough to play in a bar they want to be in.

Clothes are critically important. Give us something that looks like we want to wear it and we’re okay with it. Give us something that looks like “THE FUTURE” and we’re going to wonder why you’re an idiot. Think of Demolition Man, the 1993 Sandra Bullock-Denis Leary movie (Two if by Sea was the 1996 Sandra Bullock-Denis Leary movie for those confused), which illustrates both options. Remember the outfits there? Here’s a picture. Wesley Snipes’ outfit is some cross between shock armor and football pads. Sly’s outfit is a black t-shirt with a beret. Snipes’ outfit is ridiculous; Sly’s is classic.

Snipes and Sly also illustrate the importance of hair in futuristic sci-fi movies. Snipes has bright yellow hair cut in weird designs. Sly has the same hair he has in every other film he’s in.

Enter the haircut of TREASURE PLANET’S Jim Hawkins, which is stylish on top, shaved on the side, and has a tail in the back. Hair styles in a movie are like right tackles in football – you shouldn’t notice them, and if you do, it’s probably because they’re awful.

I don’t know what the designers were thinking with this cut, but I’m guessing they were old and unhip and should have been stopped.

The rest of the film wonderfully blends 18th-century Brit fashion and a cybernetic sci-fi future.

As the movie progresses, we find out Jim is a “troubled youth” because his dad was rarely around and then finally abandoned him. Without that male authority figure, Jim becomes increasingly uncontrollable for his mother, a single woman raising her kid and trying to run an inn all by herself. Her reward is that her inn gets burned to the ground by pirates.

Thanks, Jim! Frankly, the mom is a much more interesting character than her kid.

Anyway, a spaceship crashes and Jim helps the pilot into the inn, where he gets the treasure map (a gold puzzle ball), told to beware the cyborg, and then the inn gets destroyed by the pirates. Dr. Doppler convinces Jim’s mom to let the kid go hunting for treasure with him, and they board the RLS (get it?) Legacy, which is captained by Amelia and crewed by Long John Silver (the cyborg) and his pirates.

You know everything that’s going to happen (and not because you read Treasure Island, because you haven’t) and it unfolds with visual beauty and emotional flatness. Jim doesn’t trust Silver because he’s a cyborg, then bonds with him, then is betrayed him, then saved by him, blah blah blah. This is a story that tries to get by on its looks, but the vast array of weird-looking aliens can’t distract us from the dull script.

There’s no signing animals but Disney does still provide a few characters to fulfill those animal sidekick roles. Like the rest of the film, the results are uneven. There’s Morph, a small shape-shifting blob that’s actually quite amusing, but there’s also B.E.N., a robot castaway on Treasure Planet that’s insane and insipid and sounds like Martin Short voicing a character created for Robin Williams.

At times the story gets interesting enough to start building some momentum, but it can never sustain it. When Disney movies are at their best, they work at a level for kids and a separate one for adults, but TREASURE PLANET doesn’t offer this dual track. PLANET is a generic kid’s movie – nice to look at but incredibly simplistic. None of the characters really grab you, so you don’t care what happens to any of them (except for the mom, but she doesn’t get to come along for the ride). You know the good guys are going to win and the bad guys are going to lose. Even Long John Silver, wrapped as he is in varying shades of grey behavior, just comes off as inconsistent more than conflicted.

There are some good things to the movie. It might not be a gripping story but it moves along fast enough that it keeps you entertained if not engaged. If I ever have kids, I’d buy this movie to keep on the shelf to watch with them.

But probably not without them.