There’s quite a history of portraying alcoholics in Hollywood. From Billy Wilder’s brilliant Lost Weekend to Leaving Las Vegas, there is a surprisingly sympathetic and high quality list. However, this is nowhere near in that class yet it’s difficult to say exactly why.
The film actually has a lot going for it individually, it just never hangs together in a compelling or interesting way. Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays Kate, a primary school teacher who is popular with the kids and her colleagues. However she loves boozing, as does her feckless husband, Charlie (Aaron Paul), and together they seem to be on a permanent bender. When Kate wakes up on a bench in a car park it’s the beginning of the end, and she decides to quit the booze.
Her problem is that everyone around her loves drinking, but help arrives in the form of fellow teacher Dave (Nick Offerman), who is a member of AA and invites her to a meeting. There she meets Jenny (Octavia Spencer, terrific) who has turned her life around and helps Kate to do the same. Things start to go wrong though when Dave admits he has a crush on Kate, and her school is not quite as supportive as she imagined it would be.
The film looks great shot in only 19 days, it captures the seediness of Los Angeles’ bars and drug alleys, and a couple of shots of the relentless sunlight are truly stunning. The supporting cast are good too, especially Spencer as a bruised women determined to get herself together, and Megan Mullally as the goody-goody school head who proves to be a total hypocrite. There’s also a strong speech by Kate about the perils of being sober which, she admits, almost equal being drunk.
The problem is that films like this totally depend on the sympathy of the lead characters, and it’s here Smashed falls down badly. Winstead has been perfectly charming on screen many times before she was the only thing that made Final Destination 3 and Death Proof watchable but here she is just plain annoying. Sober, her cheap clothes and energetic maths lessons scream kooky’, and drunk she just overacts. There is a back story about her useless mother, and her hubby is equally lacking in drive, yet her relentless gurning when drunk is as irritating as her lecturing when sober.
She is not helped by a script that simply repeats key scenes and speeches several times she pretends to be pregnant to explain a vomiting episode, a scene which is referred to over and over again to the point of tedium. Similarly, when Dave makes a speech revealing his feeling for her he uses an inappropriate phrase, which she refers to far too many times. The film has a short running time but it feels interminable at times.
Overall verdict: Worthy attempt to portray alcoholism which suffers from a poor lead performance and a scrappy script which could have done with far more polish. Some nice photography and strong supporting performances fail to save it from feeling like a bad hangover. The first thing I did on leaving the screening room was have a glass of wine.
Reviewer: Mike Martin