Back when Apartment Troubles premiered at LAFF in June, the quirky comedy about two friends trying to make it in Manhattan on an artist’s salary (translation: no income at all) was called Trouble Dolls. A crumpled piece of paper at the beginning of the movie explains the Guatemalan myth of the trouble doll: A young girl can place one of these toy dolls under her pillow, and the doll will solve all her problems while she sleeps. Hey, a 20-something without financial support in the big city has to try something. But, needless to say, the dolls suck at their job. An eviction notice and one dead pet cat later, Olivia (Jennifer Prediger) and Nicole (Jess Weixler) are on a plane to LA to get away from it all. They stay with Nicole’s aunt Kimberley (Megan Mullally), a has-been judge on an America’s Got Talent-esque program. Nicole, a conceptual artist more prone to quote Chekhov than Katy Perry, can hardly stand in her aunt’s presence without a glass of red wine in hand. But broke and with nowhere to go, Nicole and Olivia take up residence in Kimberley’s home and before long are auditioning for the show.

Apartment Troubles marks the directorial and screenwriting debuts for both Weixler and Prediger. What I found interesting about the script—clearly intended to be a comedy—is that I didn’t do a whole lot of laughing. In some cases the humor seems to have been lost in translation: scenes with Will Forte, who plays a socially awkward but well-meaning guy who offers the girls a ride in LA, just completely fail to land. But jokes about a 30-year-old guy who still cares way too much about his mother’s approval turn out to be far more harmless than the bizarre plot twist with Aunt Kimberley, who takes a liking to Olivia (for more than just her voice). Their scenes together are more uncomfortable than entertaining, and like Forte’s character, completely tangential to the plot.

Where the movie succeeds is with the two leading ladies, and since this is ultimately a character piece with bits of humor thrown in to lighten its existential weight, their performances really do provide enough to make this is a worthwhile venture. I said I didn’t laugh a lot, but intentional or not, that’s something I kind of liked about this movie. It’s easy to take eccentric artsy types and make them into caricatures, but that’s not what this movie is really about. While a show like Girls helps us to laugh with a generation of girls who got their Bachelor degrees and make naive (sometimes absurd) life choices, I don’t think Apartment Troubles is really trying to critique its lead characters. Instead, I think it’s trying to ask if there is a place in this world for people like them, a question worth asking in an age where art degrees are looked at with the same disdain as drug addiction or sexual promiscuity. Nicole’s family treats her art ventures as a harmful and destructive life choice. One she could ultimately change. “I don’t think they want her around the kids,” Kimberley confesses to Olivia on why Nicole’s family may have taken a vacation without her.

Maybe it’s helpful here that Prediger and Weixler wrote the script, because Weixler’s Nicole, particularly, feels eccentric, yes, but like a living, breathing person. She has a way of delivering her lines with a certain calm and carefulness—a bit counter-stereotype for a role like this. There is, however, a deflatedness in her energy on-screen, like if she wasn’t too poor to eat something other than juice smoothies, she might want to try a small dosage of Zoloft. She’s been beaten down, and now her one remaining lifeline, her bestie Olivia, is making strides toward normalcy: successfully making small talk with strange dudes in cars, landing a TV ad, and insisting the girls apply for a silly reality TV show.

To be honest, if someone positioned this film to me as “two east coast girls take a leap of faith and go on a reality TV show,” I would have never hit play. The premise seems prime for obvious and overdone satire, but I think the reason it works here is because we never stray too far from a story of two friends. It’s not about auditioning for TV, it’s about two young ladies, finding their footing in the world. Their response to rejection shows the film’s subtle tension: these girls both desperately need each other and just as desperately need to separate from one another. Outside of the confines of whatever quirky art school they just graduated from, each has to learn to what extent she’ll adapt and which rules of society they’ll choose to play by.

The script doesn’t let Nicole go on depressive woe-is-me tangents, but as far as I’m concerned, this film is all about her, and taking an eccentric personality and treating her with the subtlety Weixler does is an appreciated surprise when dealing with this genre. By the movie’s end it’s not any external circumstance that lets us know she’ll be OK, but the way she quotes Chekov to a starving cat while sitting in a pile of trash outside her apartment (OK, I confess, this sounds hilarious—but it’s a genuinely tender moment). The fact that she can still see beauty in the struggle lets us know Nicole isn’t broken. And maybe it’s not she that needs to change, she just needs to change the minds of others.

It’s not a perfect script by any stretch, and it probably helps if you already have a little empathy for the plight of the artistically inclined, but the film has a lot of heart—and both Prediger and Weixler are transfixing on screen. It’s impossible not to root for them. Even I was able to forget that a conceptual piece about a dead cat could never do well on a cutthroat talent competition. That’s America’s loss.

A cross between the millennial musings of Lena Dunham and the dimwittedness of Romy and Michele, Trouble Dolls is a female buddy comedy for today’s self-aware art hipsters, or more specifically those looking to poke fun at them. Written and directed by its co-stars, actress Olivia (Jennifer Prediger) and artist Nicole (Jess Weixler) are best friends and roommates living the boho life in New York City. Their electricity is off (by choice they say), their rent is short, and they are starving (or on a cleanse, it’s all about perspective). When Olivia’s beloved cat Seagull dies unexpectedly, Nicole decides a weekend vacation is in order. Utilizing her father’s private jet, she whisks Olivia off to California to visit her aunt Kimberley (Megan Mullally).

Without the foresight to charge their phone, let alone phone ahead to inform her aunt of their arrival, the two hitch a ride with another person at the airport (Will Forte), which Olivia insists will work out fine. Along the way to auntie’s house, they realize their chauffeur is on a prescription pill cocktail that may soon turn ugly. So they bolt, walking the rest of the way. Upon their arrival, Nicole’s aunt welcomes them with open arms, doting upon them (a little too graciously for Olivia’s liking), and lets slip that Nicole’s family is on a planned trip without her. Nicole sulks while Olivia is wooed by Aunt Kimberley,  a host for a talent TV reality show called “That Special Something”,  into auditioning for her show. After the two girls have their tarot cards read the next day, Nicole believes she should help Olivia with her audition, turning it into a mixture of her art and Olivia’s monologue.

With faces painted white and adorned in black trash bags, the girls go to the audition to perform in front of the judges, Lance Bass, Christopher Reid, and of course Aunt Kimberley. A strange mixture of spoken word, dialogue, flower backdrop, and projected images, their art piece is hilariously baffling. Afterwards Olivia is upset over her audition as Nicole begins to see the unhealthiness of their co-dependence. The two take their aggressions out on one another and as they begin to change, they have to figure out if their friendship can change with them.

Prediger and Weixler play off one another well and hold a believable friendship. Their jokes, however, aren’t as easily swallowed and while it’s easy to laugh at their naiveté to a certain point, eventually their obtuse and self-centered traits make for a heavier atmosphere than I think they were really going for. Their A-list co-stars handle the satire with far more ease, but are given some questionable character twists. Megan Mullally is fantastic as an oft-drunk washed up starlet, but is also an oddly predatory-like closeted lesbian whose advances on Olivia start out as funny then quickly move to uncomfortable. Jeffrey Tambor equally shines in his small role as the girls’ landlord, but a landlord who happens to be in an on-again off-again relationship with Nicole. They seemed to have aimed for awkward but went flying over their mark.

As a first directorial attempt on both Prediger and Weixler’s part, they’ve fashioned a friendship comedy that relies too much on the love its main characters hold for each other to buy over their audience. The film’s title comes from the tiny dolls Olivia whispers her hopes and troubles to, placing them beneath her pillow to manage her and Nicole’s anxieties. But no doll can save these girls from their troubles, as in the end the girls (and the movie as a whole) seem hardly willing to truly manage their own destinies.

In the Name of

Polish star Andrzej Chyra plays priest Adam, unusually hip and good-looking for a man of god, in Malgorzata Szumowska’s pensive character study, In the Name of. The film explores a loaded (if somewhat dated) issue—homosexuality and pedophilia in the Catholic Church—that would be a veritable minefield for most directors, but is handled gracefully by Szumowska.

Father Adam is great at his job—mentoring and supervising a group of delinquent boys to keep them out of deeper trouble. The problem is, he’s in deep trouble himself as he’s unable to shake his sinful, sexual gravitation toward one of the boys, a near mute wild child (think Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club, but even dirtier and more violent.) Sobbing and beside himself, he vents to his sister online, “I’m not a pedophile. I’m a faggot.”

Steeped in melodrama and angst, In the Name of takes its time, revealing bits and pieces of Adam’s psyche artfully and with a degree of understanding and acceptance. Sunlight gently spills over the lush Polish landscape majestically, softly, as if to say God’s eye loves and forgives all. Szumowska similarly casts no judgment on his troubled characters, the key to the film’s success.

RATING: 8

GBF

After nearly 15 years, Darren Stein follows up 1999’s Jawbreaker with GBF, a plastic, mildly funny, but surprisingly touching and sweet high school clique-drama. When geeky introvert Tanner (Michael J. Willett) is accidentally outed to the school by his BFF, the more colorful but still closeted Brent (Paul Iocano), Tanner gets even by outing him to his homo-ignorant mother (Megan Mullally, in uncharacteristically underwhelming form.) Feelings are bruised badly, and the buddies split. The three most popular girls in school (uninspired archetypes every one) anoint Tanner—the sole out kid in school—as their GBF (Gay Best Friend), while Brent resentfully watches from the social outcast sidelines. Tanner struggles to get comfortable in his new role as the school’s “it” kid, all the while coming to terms with being “out and proud.”

The script, written by newcomer George Northy, grasps at the teen comedy glory of Mean Girls, Easy A, and even Clueless, but falls short with lingo that’s sorely lacking style and eloquence. “This is an A and gay conversation, so kindly C your next Tuesday out of it!” Huh? Painfully contrived lines like these are in abundance and stink up the joint.

GBF’s shining star is easily the character of Tanner who, unlike the rest of the cast, is multi-dimensional and avoids nearly every gay stereotype in the book—he’s not into fashion, he reads comic books, and he’s not into theater. He’s played brilliantly by Willett, whose performance carries an authenticity absent in his co-stars. He talks like a real person, looks like a real person, and shows compassion like a real person. The juxtaposition of his (and to an extent, Iocano’s) heartfelt performance to the rest of the casts’ broad, shallow ones may have been intentionally aiming for the satirical, but it ultimately feels clunky and uneven.

There are some genuinely cute moments to be found in GBF, and the sweet central relationship between Willett and Iocano saves it from mediocrity, but unfunny writing and a forgettable supporting cast weigh everything down.

RATING: 6

There are a lot of wonderful components at work in Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ feature debut— a savvy, clever screenplay, gorgeous nature-porn cinematography, a heaping helping of ‘80s nostalgia, and a genuinely funny cast—he just doesn’t quite fit them together. Every scene works in the moment, but when I took a step back from The Kings of Summer, I noticed how disjointed and shoddily constructed the production is. Vogt-Roberts aims for profundity but misses the mark as his fondness for improv-heavy long-takes and sheer outlandishness dulls the impact of the moments that engage the heart.

Chris Galletta’s screenplay is familiar material, a tale of youthful independence painted with glistening ‘80s nostalgia that invites comparison to its coming-of-age-movie older brothers (Stand By Me, Lord of the Flies), but it lacks their substance. Joe Toy (Nick Robinson), is a wiseass teen with a dad (Nick Offerman, Parks and Recreation) who’s been a verbally abusive asshole to Joe ever since his wife died. Joe has a dream of independence, of breaking free from his dad and living on his own. Joe’s a doer, so he makes this happen. He builds a shabby dumpster-hut of a house in the woods just outside of town with his best friend Patrick (Gabriel Basso) who is equally enthusiastic about escaping the clutches of his overprotective all-American parents (played by comedy vets Megan Mullally and Marc Evan Jackson). Their tiny alien/cartoon-like friend Biaggio (Moises Arias) tags along for the ride, a strange creature of a kid who spews the most random (and hilarious) one-liners I’ve heard in a long time. The merry trio live the dream, roaring and romping and stomping through the wilderness, jumping into lakes (in slow motion), living off the land (and a nearby Boston Market) and never bathing or shaving.

As I mentioned earlier, Joe’s a go-getter, so now that he’s made his first dream a reality it’s on to the next one. He invites his crush, Kelly (Erin Moriarty) out to the playhouse in hopes of working his sunglass-suave charm on her. His ploy to kindle a summer fling doesn’t play out as she falls for Patrick, the Cameron to Joe’s Bueller. The rift that forms between the best buds eventually shatters the dreams that Joe worked so hard to make real. All the while, the parents search for the boys and search themselves for the reason they drove their sons away.

What shines about The Kings of Summer is its cast, who all hit homeruns from top to bottom. Robinson hangs with the hilariously boorish and grumpy Offerman like a pro—their verbal assaults on each other are equally gut-busting. Arias is funny as hell as the out-of-this-world Biaggio, really digging into bizarre lines like “I met a dog the other day that taught me how to die”. You need to embrace your role to make lines like that work, and everybody in the film attacks with the same level of commitment.

What’s problematic is that I went from laughing out loud at Biaggio’s slapstick to staring blankly at sobering, out of place, Malick-ian montages of the kids basking in sun-soaked tall grass and splashing around in a pastoral river. In a later scene a random ‘totally wasted’ couple sloppily attempts to screw in that same river, and we’re back to slapstick again. The montages are actually quite pretty, and the drunk couple scene is funny, but they feel like they belong to different movies.

There is a lot to enjoy in The Kings of Summer, but there is also a lot to be desired. The cast’s spot-on performances are worth the price of admission, but I can’t help but think how great the film could have been, if only it were more comfortable in its own skin.

In Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ The Kings of Summer (which screened at the San Francisco International Film Festival), young guns Nick Robinson, Gabriel Basso, and Moises Arias play teenage boys who break free from their overbearing parents, build a kick-ass house in the woods, live off the land (sort of), and invite girls over to have some uninhibited, no-shits-given fun. Girls however, as we all know, are the downfall of many a teenage boy friendship, so the mirage of paradise quickly fades. Backstabbing, insult-flinging, and heartbreaking ensue as the nature boys battle over (what else?) the pretty girls. The Kings of Summer is as intelligent as it is hilarious, and its cast spits nothing but comedy gold.

The three young stars of the film spoke with Way Too Indie about stretching their improve skills, working with the likes of Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally, the importance of getting along with each other on set, throwing hammers, and much more.

WTI: You guys are really on point in the film in terms of your improvisation skills. Nick, you had an especially tall task, going line for line with Nick Offerman, who plays your dad. Did you guys spend time before the shoot practicing improv?

Nick Robinson: We were all enrolled in an improv class before [filming] started to get to know one another and also to hone our skills, since we were going to be working with some of the funniest people in the world. It helped. I got to go toe to toe with Nick Offerman and survived so…

Moises Arias: It was very interesting. I could only show up to one of the classes, so I only got to meet the dudes (Nick and Gabriel). I hadn’t met Jordan. I got the role on tape because I was shooting another film. It was a very, very interesting first day. Jordan was a really cool dude, Nick and Gabriel were ready to do their thing, and I was excited. Nick Offerman is one of the greatest people I’ve ever worked with. [I didn’t have a scene with] Megan Mullally, but she was fantastic to watch work. Marc Evan Jackson is a genius. It was awesome.

Gabriel Basso: Yeah, they pretty much said it (laughs). It was a pleasure working with them.

WTI: Moises, your lines in the film as the wonderfully weird Biaggio absolutely killed at the screening I went to. The things you say are really strange and off-putting, and totally hilarious. Were there lines cut out of the film that were even more bizarre?

MA: One hundred percent. [One of the lines from the film] “I met a dog that taught me how to die” is pretty out there. Chris Galletta is a fantastic writer. He comes up with random shit right on the spot. Jordan is big on skits and rolling the camera longer [than normal] and just riffing. Everybody stepped their games up and brought something to the table. I just felt that I should say whatever came into my head. A lot of it was really stupid. I remember one specific joke that didn’t make it. There would be a moment when I wouldn’t be looking at Nick, and he’d say…

NR: “Hey, Biaggio, look at me.”

MA: “I’m looking right at you.”

NR: “You’re not looking at me.”

MA: “Yes I am.”

NR: “Biaggio, you’re clearly not looking at me!”

MA: “I’m making complete eye contact.” It would just go on and on and on. There were a lot [of scenes] where we’d go on too long, or just weren’t funny. It was very interesting.

WTI: Nick, you and Gabriel had very different challenges. You had to, like you said, go toe to toe with Nick Offerman, one of the funniest people in movies. Gabriel, you had to listen to Megan Mullally and Marc Evan Jackson (who play your parents) deliver insanely funny dialog while standing there trying to act upset and annoyed.

GB: It was incredibly tough. You have to not laugh. It’s one of those things where you don’t really have a choice, and if you break, you have to go back as quick as you can. I had a scene with Megan and the woman who played my grandma where [Nick and I] could not keep it together. They ended up cutting the scene short either because it didn’t work or…

NR: It was probably our fault (laughs). We could not keep our shit together.

GB: It was bad!

NR: It was 2am or something, and we were just so tired. For some reason, [that scene] was just hilarious.

GB: It was extremely tough, because I had to act pissed, and they were saying the funniest stuff. It was tough, but awesome at the same time.

NR: Nick Offerman is pretty intimidating to work with at first, but [once I got to know him] he was the nicest man I’d ever met. He does not break. No matter what, he does not break. I’d have to bite my tongue so hard during his stonewall delivery. I got used to it after a little while, but it was tough.

MA: I made him break once! Let’s just put that out there. It was during the snake/urine scene. Let’s just keep it at that.

NR: Okay, okay (laughs). That was a moment.

WTI: Were there takes where you’d shoot way longer than you intended to, just trading lines with these talented folks?

NR: Oh yeah. Like Moises said, Jordan is a big fan of just letting the cameras roll, letting everybody riff and mess around and seeing what comes out of it. We’d have 20-minute takes where, when everyone ran out of dialog, we would just throw stuff in and get as much funny stuff as we could. I really like that style, personally. Very loose, a lot of freedom, a lot of creativity.

MA: The musical pipe scene [at the beginning of the film] is all improvised. The director, writer, and cinematographer took us into the woods on a day off. They took us to these awesome locations that they didn’t have a reason for filming, but they were like “Let’s shoot B-roll just for shits and giggles. They took us to the pipe, and they said “Just start banging on the pipe!” We all started banging on it at first, then I decided to jump on it and just started doing these amazingly choreographed moves that were perfectly professional (laughs). It sort of became the backbone of the film.

GB: That’s iPhone sound in the scene.

WTI: No way…

GB: Yeah (laughs). We could have used that thing! (Gabriel points at the field recorder I use to do interviews).

WTI: It seems, from how well you guys work together, that you are friends off-set.

MA: I’ve worked on sets where you don’t get along, and that’s brutal. As an actor, you learn to try to get that spark at the beginning every time you work, because it makes things easier. These guys are good dudes and good people to work with. [Playing] Biaggio wasn’t too hard because he’s in his own world. He doesn’t have to have any [sort of rapport] with anybody. It was pretty much up to Gabriel and Nick. They’re the two best friends.

NR: The movie kind of depends on [Gabriel and I’s] relationship. It’s really hard to fake chemistry, but luckily the cast was amazing. It would have been a miserable shoot if I didn’t get along with the cast. It would have been miserable.

GB: We shot in the middle of nowhere.

NR: Yeah. At least 12 hours a day, with each other all the time. If I didn’t like you, Gabe (laughs)…shit would have gone down!

GB: It goes both ways! Thank god we got along. Near the end of the shoot, we had more down time than we had at the beginning, so we got a chance to bond.

WTI: What’s great about the film is that it’s about kids, but doesn’t insult the audience’s intelligence. There’s a maturity about the film that makes it stand out among other films with similar plots.

GB: A lot of that has to do with the script. It was really well-written. In fact, that’s what brought us to the project. Chris did an amazing job. Thank god Jordan was there, because he put an amazing artistic spin on it. Ross Riege, the cinematographer, is brilliant.

NR: Ross is a genius.

WTI: Some shots look like a Terrence Malick film.

NR: Yeah, lots of Malick influence, lots of old Spielberg.

GB: But yeah, it just comes down to the script and the people we had executing the material. It all came together really, really well, and we all worked hard on it. I’m happy with the way it turned out.

WTI: Talk a little about the set of the house in the woods. It’s amazing! Did you guys improvise at all with it physically?

MA: The hammer throwing was destroying the house instead of building it.

GB: (laughs) It was coming down when we were messing around with it like that.

MA: The tree scene where I’m camouflaged [was improvised]. The throwing of the stick and all that shit was all Gabe.

GB: I hit that mailbox multiple times.

MA: He’s very proud of that.

GB: It was my moment on set (laughs).

NR: I remember the first time I got really excited on set was the day we walked into the house set for the first time. It was so cool. The set decorators did an amazing job. It immediately felt like a home. They had all kinds of trinkets and weird stuff on the walls. Part of the roof was a whiteboard. They scavenged from some dump. They had a pee bottle filled with lemonade in the corner (laughs). I’d always find new little things in that house as we filmed, like some nook that I missed or some weird figurine.

WTI: The film’s ending is very well done. It sort of makes the film, as we don’t end up where we expected to.

NR: The ending is amazing. It pretty much came off as written in the original script with us flipping each other off in the cars and driving off.

MA: In the hospital, [they] had a little dialog sequence, but they cut that out. They don’t exchange a word at the end, and I think it worked out perfectly. I love how that last scene came together. When I saw it for the first time at Sundance, I was like…”That was dope.”

GB: It reflects real life. You know, the cool guy doesn’t always get the girl. Friends don’t always mend a relationship after stuff like that goes down. I think the reason it lands with most people is because they’ve been through that and they haven’t walked away unscarred. You walk away with a little rift between you which will eventually be mended. [There are consequences] to decisions, and the end of the film does a good job of showing that.

NR: The last scene was actually the last scene we filmed, so it did have weight to it. “This is the last one. Let’s do it for the road. Cheers.”

The Kings of Summer is out in select cities this Friday, May 31st. Stay tuned to Way Too indie for our full review.

Trying to balance a humorous, honest and emotional film about alcoholism seems like an impossible task but it is what James Ponsoldt’s Smashed attempts to do. The film has earned some recognition by winning the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival as well as a nomination for the Grand Jury Prize and recently receiving an Independent Spirit Award nod for Best Female Lead. While Smashed centers around a characters dependence on alcohol, the film itself is largely dependent on the performance of its characters to carry it. For the most part they do but were relied on too much as the script wears thin by the third act.

Kate (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and Charlie Hannah (Aaron Paul) wake up in urine stained bed sheets but shrug it off as not a big deal which implies that it is a common occurrence. Kate is seen showering with a beer after a heavy night of drinking before heading off to work as an elementary school teacher. Before entering class, she takes some drinks from her flask. When she is teaching, however, she is the fun teacher that is very energetic playing with all the kids. That is until all the movement causes her to throw up in front of them.

Someone without a strong dependence on alcohol would most likely feel ashamed by this and would have seen the incident as a sign. But instead Kate goes out the same night to a local bar and does karaoke, of course under the influence of alcohol. One event leads to another and she ends up smoking crack after a prostitute convinces her to give her a ride. She wakes up on the street the next morning and finally starts to consider the fact that she has a problem.

After talking to one of her co-workers about her problem, Kate gets introduced to an Alcoholics Anonymous program. She starts attending meetings with her co-worker and begins to transform into a new sober person. People told her that the beginning of sobriety was the hardest yet it was not as difficult on her as it was on the relationship between her and her husband. The story ends up being whether Kate can continue to fight through her addiction by herself or cave into her old destructive self by staying with Charlie.

The cast ends up being by far the best asset of Smashed. Mary Elizabeth Winstead shines in a role that is dark and depressing. As the film progresses, you see the different sides of her character based on her level of sobriety. Aaron Paul plays a familiar role of the out of control substance abuser as he does in the excellent TV show Breaking Bad but is in the film less than you may imagine. Nick Offerman from another popular TV show, Parks and Recreation, plays the role of Kate’s co-worker who introduces her to AA. Offerman does well in the role but the role itself felt questionable. He is obviously an important part of the story as he leads Kate in the right direction but after one awkward scene you wonder if he was just meant for comic relief.

This leads into what I think was the biggest problem of Smashed, and that is the direction (or lack of direction) the film wanted to take. At times Smashed felt like it was aiming for the end product to be a light dramedy. Demonstrated when Kate is drinking whiskey in her car before teaching class, the music was light and almost cheerful. By the end it feels like it was an attempt to make it a dark character study that is a little harder hitting. By no means is having a balance a bad thing but this felt more like indecisiveness than anything.

Smashed is a sincere character study about a woman that deals with an addiction that grows beyond her control and the consequences that come from it. It is an honest take on a dark subject matter of alcoholism. Unfortunately, the film feels like it is missing clear direction and falls apart a bit in the third act. A couple of the characters felt underwritten, forcing Mary Elizabeth Winstead to do most of the heavy lifting which she fortunately handles well. Smashed fits into the rare category of a film not being long enough, or perhaps edited down too much, for it to be completely effective.