Smiley Face

I don't fault Gregg Araki for wanting to follow-up his 2004 masterpiece Mysterious Skin with something less intense. As beautiful as that film is, it was probably an emotionally wrenching experience to adapt, shoot, and edit that material over the course of many years. Why not turn to a silly-ass stoner comedy next? The Coen brothers sort of did the same thing already, following up their Oscar-winning breakthrough Fargo with the initially puzzling but subsequently beloved Big Lebowski.

Smiley Face isn't quite The Big Lebowski or even Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle in the pantheon of great stoner adventures, but it has many goofy charms. The first and most obvious is Anna Faris, in her first lead role outside of the Scary Movie franchise. Faris plays failed grad student turned stoner actress Jane whose desire to bake replacement weed cupcakes for her scary nerd roommate (the disgraced Danny Masterson) leads to a series of mishaps and a convoluted journey across Los Angeles.

Araki clearly has a ball peopling Jane's journey with a murderer's row of comic actors, some of whom weren't as famous as they would become. John Krasinski is the Trekkie geek with an inexplicable crush on the slobby Jane. Adam Brody is the fake-dreaded pot dealer who threatens to steal Jane's luxurious bed as payment for the excessive weed he has fronted her. Jane Lynch, Jayma Mays, and Jim Rash -- pre-Glee and pre-Community -- all appear in a calamitous audition sequence where Faris's character tries to sell high-potency weed to her casting agent. Danny Trejo and John Cho (Harold himself!) play sausage factory workers who stumble across a sleeping Jane in their refrigerated truck.

I'll admit to laughing and enjoying many sections of Smiley Face, but I also checked the clock more times than one probably should during an 85-minute movie. The best moments in the film explore Jane's stoned inner monologue, like an elaborate tribute to lasagna or the opening where Jane hears classic TV actor Roscoe Lee Browne providing narration to her convoluted conundrum. (Araki, ever the sitcom lover, casts Marion Ross from Happy Days in a brief role as well.) Araki's pop art/live-action comic book sensibility is well suited to this kind of material. It was a treat to see underground animation giant Sally Cruikshank's opening titles too. Unfortunately, the script (credited to Dylan Haggerty) is not able to build a comic momentum, and the whole does not add up to more than the sum of its parts.

Vital Disc Stats: The Blu-ray
Dark Star and OCN Distribution feature Smiley Face in a standard keepcase, packaged with a 16-page booklet featuring color photos and an essay by critic Mia Lee Vicino. The limited edition version found on the Vinegar Syndrome website features a slipcover designed by the great comic artist Michael Deforge. Both editions include reversible cover art featuring the original home video box on one side and Deforge's design on the other. The disc loads to a copyright warning and company logo before switching to a full-motion menu.

Visually, this AVC-encoded 1080p 1.78:1 presentation is a throwback to that long-ago era (think back, kids!) when low-budget indies were shot on film. Director Gregg Araki and DP Shawn Kim exploit the grain at various moments to emphasize Jane's *ahem* altered subjectivity. The digital encode does a good job of translating this style organically with only isolated moments of noticeable compression and noise. Colors pop and detail is sometimes remarkably sharp without apparent tampering.

The disc offers three mixes, although the DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround mix is the obvious go-to choice. The sound design is only really noticeable in the moments where Jane's stoned paranoia gets out of control, but the surround mix does a nice job at these points. Gregg Araki frequently has exemplary song soundtracks and there are a number of well-deployed needle drops by acts as disparate as Talking Heads, Styx, REO Speedwagon, Scissor Sisters, and The Chemical Brothers. Dolby Digital mixes in 5.1 surround and 2.0 stereo are also on the disc, presumably for archival purposes (?). One subtitle option is offered: English SDH.

In addition to the Mia Lee Vicino booklet essay mentioned above, there is a new analytical audio commentary to supplement the film. An EPK included on the original DVD did not make the leap to Blu-ray.

• Audio commentary by historian Elizabeth Purchell - Purchell starts off with an explanation of why she did not go through with an early idea to do the commentary while blazed out of her mind. It's probably for the best, as her cogent dissection of Gregg Araki's career and style would likely have suffered in the name of gonzo commentating.
• Trailer - It's the home video trailer from First Look Pictures' 2008 release.
• Trailers for other recent Dark Star releases

Gregg Araki is a director whose work is never boring even when it doesn't really hit the mark. There a lot of nice scenes, moments, and performances in Smiley Face. For that reason, if it sounds interesting... eh, give it a shot! I may have gotten frustrated with its hit-and-miss stoner humor, but I'm not really mad at the movie. The new audio commentary is a really engaging listen and certainly worth it for fans of Araki's career. Taken as a package, it's Worth a Look.