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Review Summary

“Smiley Face,” about a pot-addled would-be actress stumbling through a long, weird day in Los Angeles, is a contradiction in terms: a “stoner” comedy with a purpose. Directed by Gregg Araki from a screenplay by Dylan Haggerty, the movie at first seems a psychedelic lark, in the spirit of “The Big Lebowski,” “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle” and other works distinguished by picaresque narratives and cumulus clouds of marijuana smoke. Mr. Araki, a trailblazer of early ’90s queer cinema, can stage a non sequitur with the best of them. He gets plenty of opportunities thanks to his lead actress, the “Scary Movie” star Anna Faris, whose freakishly committed performance as Jane F. suggests Amy Adams’s princess from “Enchanted” dropped into a Cheech and Chong movie. — Matt Zoller Seitz, The New York Times