Hollywood has a fine tradition of pot-comedies. Wait is that how I want to phrase that? Anyway, the one thing about those movies is that I can’t ever remember one where with a female lead. Usually, women in pot comedies are the shrill girlfriend or mother character that’s trying to get their boyfriend/son to get chronic less and straighten-up and fly right. But Smiley Face is different. In this one, it’s the girl that’s driven by an insatiable desire to smoke up, smoke up some more and then pursue some delicious munchies. In the fine tradition of dew smoked comedies, Smiley Face serves itself well.

Go-to bobblehead Anna Faris plays Jane F, a barely aspiring actress that seems to spend all her time vegged out and high just sitting around, trying vainly to comprehend what’s going on around her. The film opens with Jane sitting on a Ferris wheel, talking back to her own thoughts, which speak in the voice of actor Roscoe Lee Browne. She’s trying to remember the improbable series of events that led her to sitting a top the Ferris wheel, and through flashbacks we see how an early morning toke leads to the whole consumption of a batch of pot cupcakes, and a series of compounded challenges to replace those cupcakes before her roommate finds out.

The aimless quality of the plot is merely a device to get Jane from one harebrained situation to the next. It’s completely improbable and it’s completely nonsensical, but filled with these Family Guy style cut away gags that provide instant, easy laughs. Faris rules this proverbial and pot-filled roost with aplomb by getting all the stoner touchstones right, while giving her own twist to one of the most possibly archetypal characters in modern comedy. Seemingly built around Faris’ ample comedic talents, Smiley Face just kind of chugs along at it’s own pace with occasional bursts of belly-laugh inducing moments, usually involving Jane’s perceived hyper-reality.

But there are times when the movie grates because it’s playing the same cards as numerous other stoner comedies. But the characters make it cool. Aside from Faris we have Danny Masterson as her creepy roommate Steve, who’s always seen in some kind of dehumanizing light almost like an X-Files mutant or something. The Office’s Jon Krasinski plays Brevin, a nerdy fellow to whom Jane is the object of his affection, and it’s kind of odd to see the reversal, if you’re familiar at all with the sitcom, of Krasinski playing a role very much in the vain of Dwight Schrute. He nails it though, as jarring as it was to see Fun Jim play the stuff shirt; almost as jarring as it was to see Seth Cohen, The O.C.’s Adam Brody, in dreds.

It’s these kinds of bizarre casting touches that make Smiley Face so winning, that and Faris comedic timing and willingness to make herself look as goofy and as witless as humanly possibly. It’s funny, it’s diverting, but I’m not sure if it’s a cult classic in the making as some have seemed to indicate. It’s certainly no Reefer Madness or Up in Smoke, no startling reinvention of the genre but a lot of jokes about how weed makes you scared, confused, and bemused easily. I was perfectly sober while watching it, but I found my attention waver as I watched. Unfortunately, there is only so many times you can watch someone loose their faculties to mind-altering drugs without being unintentionally swayed to the just say no column.