That is the question of Anna Faris's existence in Gregg Araki's latest movie Smiley Face.
After the 1990s My Bloody Valentine laced Mysterious Skin at TIFF 2004[!], Araki just wanted to make a stoner movie. Smiley Face has been making the rounds of the festival movie circuit, debuting at Sundance then SXSW, Cannes, Munich, Deauville amongst others before hitting TIFF07. It's just one of those movies that has to be seen to be believed. Araki dedicated the screening of Smiley Face to Anna Faris, the next Carole Lombard / Veronica Lake of this generation. The dipstick actress in Lost in Translation promoting her new film and singing bad karaoke to Nobody Does It Better, May, Scary Movies galore, but Smiley Face may be her bravest and best performance yet.
Smiley Face is that ubiquitous symbol of happiness, and Jane, our resident stoner, is the epitome of that state of happiness. Always with a smiling face of bliss, Jane is awakened and finds herself on top of a ferris wheel. How did she end up on a ferris wheel ride, how did she get from Point A to Point Z is the question of her existence. The flashback through her day is a hilarious adventure of being high and the low of paranoia. The pace and editing of Smiley Face is fast and furious - zeroing in on Jane's crazed state of mind.
Ultimately Jane has to get herself to the Venice festival in order to payoff her drug dealer, where she finds herself atop the ferris wheel. But before Smiley Face gets rolling, Jane has an acting audition at 11 a.m. her agent had laboured to get for her, so Jane starts her day in the usual way, smoking up. Before that, her roomate [ Danny Masterson ] going out for the day, leaves her with simple instructions to pay the electric bill otherwise he would skull-*** her. However, with a case of the munchies she finds her roommate's icing topped cupcakes clearly labelled "for the convention". Two plus two equals Jane quickly discovers the true nature of the cupcakes.
Then what a long wild journey she goes on. In her wild state, the movie is filled with Jane's mental checklist of things to do and the consequences including the skull***.
She then tries to fix her problems – make more cupcakes but first she has to get drugs which she gets from her dealer, but she has to pay the dealer [ disguised as The O.C.'s dreadlocked Adam Brody ] by 3 pm that day, also pay the electric bill, go to an audition ... Jane is so stoned she cannot even mix the pot into the butter she attempts to melt in order to make the cupcakes and ends up burning the whole mess of butter and pot on the stove. Flash ! To get the money she needs to pay off the dealer by 3 pm that afternoon at the Venice Hemp Festival, Jane goes into her hidden stash of the government weed.
The rest of her day is a nightmare of paranoia making new acquaintances including John Cho the driver of the pork sausage truck she flees in while trying to run away from the many angry men she keeps meeting.
After the long dark journey into the soul that was Mysterious Skin [or Doom Generation or Nowhere for that matter], Gregg Araki in his fifth movie at Toronto International Film Festival, has come up with the perfect laugh-filled escapist movie
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