Anna Faris is God

With all due respect to Cheech & Chong, "Smiley Face" is the "Citizen Kane" of Stoner Movies and Anna Faris is the new Queen of Comedy. Mirren can keep her awards; Anna Faris rules and soon everyone will bow to Her Majesty. All hail Faris!

I laughed more at "Smiley Face" than I did at "Borat." (I saw it at Sundance; it doesn't come out until April.) After watching all the "Ali G." episodes (some multiple times), I was overly familiar with Sacha Baron Cohen's schtick--and aside from the nude wrestling, which killed me--I was mostly amused, not hysterical . Don't get me wrong, I had a wonderful time, but watching that film for me was like encountering Will Ferrell's bare butt--always a welcome sight, but you've seen it before.

Cohen I knew; Faris stoned was new. And that girl had me at first toke.

I don't think I'm giving away too much to say that "Smiley Face" is 84 minutes of Anna Faris walking around LA completely baked. The script (by Dylan Haggerty) centers on her attempt to accomplish the day's tasks that she sets for herself: scoring more pot, going to an audition, paying the electric bill, etc. There are some moments of high drama--whether she should eat her nerd roommate's cannabis-laced cupcakes, and at a certain point in the plot she comes into possession of a first edition of the Communist Manifesto.

I think it's fair to say that this story doesn't seem like it has the makings of a cinematic masterpiece and one might wonder why Gregg Araki chose this project as the follow-up to "Mysterious Skin."

But Faris takes this thin-as-a-Matzoh premise and with nothing more than her gaping Lucille Ball rubber-mouth, her glassy-eyed stare, her wacked-out inventiveness, and her complete absence of vanity, spins something awe-inspiring out of what would have been a really stupid movie. (Okay, it's still a stupid movie, but it's great stupid.) Watching her, I thought about the joy I felt when I first encountered other great comedians (of course I saw her before in the "Scary Movie" series and "Lost in Translation," but this is a Great Leap Forward). We can never have enough funny people.

There's no malice to Faris's humor. She's not snarky like Sarah Silverman or hostile like a lot of stand-ups. She reminds me of Michael Palin--innocent and silly--I can easily imagine her slapping John Cleese with a fish. And more pointedly, her work in this film isn't mainly verbal; it plays out on her face (or more precisely, on her dazed and confused maw) like silent film comedy. Try to think of how many comedians today could be funny without words, or carry so much of a film alone on the screen.

Don't watch the trailer for "Smiley Face." It cuts the gags together frantically and the comedy isn't given the leisurely velocity it requires. "Smiley Face" needs to play out at its intrinsic pace (somewhere between Kiarostami and late Antonioni on the cinematic freeway) to give Faris's genius its full rein. When Faris delivers her (already legendary) monologue about lasagne and Garfield, we need those Pinter-like pauses as she nudges her thoughts through her fuzzed-out brain. It's poetry.

Remember those old "Superman" ads? "You'll believe a man can fly." Faris will convince you that you are high. In every meaning of the word.