Smartass

The whole movie is chaotic. It follows the story of a 15years old who is so spoiled and bored of her life that decides to hop on a journey to find some adventure and she is accompanied by her junkie friends trying to sell coke and the movie is kinda based on drugs & gangs. Joey King does a good job playing Freddie which is inspired by Writer-Director's life (Jena Serbu) . You may even feel for Freddie through her dark unsafe journey when she shed some tears and say "I'm just too tired to be murdered!"

Anyway "Smartass" ain't a good word to describe the 15years old protagonist of the movie or the movie itself .It Sends some bad messages to young people out there to follow what she did. So if you really have nothing better to do and you're really bored and into these type of fast-paced absurd comedies and wanna have some fun, instead of doing what Freddie (main character) did, just watch some movies. Smartass is one!

Joey King portrays a young, rebellious, reckless, and often humorously dimwitted teenager named Freddie on her quest to San Diego, California. However, along her journey, she encounters various strangers and situations often either turning violent, making her more vulnerable, or going everywhere.

Unfortunately, the storytelling and tone deliberately goes everywhere the moment audiences are randomly introduced to various subplots seemingly following the main focus with Freddie. It couldn't decide who to follow, what genres it wanted, what film it wanted to be, and give reasons to care.

There's genuine ideas ridiculously merged together that would've otherwise been another film with better writing. Freddie's story involves some humorous and heartfelt concepts but also strangely darkly humorous and horrifying scenarios with people being unhinged, homicidal, boldly prejudiced, and moronic.

As these stories involving drugs, mischief, and murder collide they're never fully utilized or find their purpose until it's nearly over. But by that time, audiences remain bewildered, unsatisfied, and pity the characters for their ineptness and the film's lackluster focus. It couldn't decide what to do or be long enough to underwhelm the experience.

"Smartass" wasn't smart enough to overshadow its half-witted writing.

Most of the time, movies that end up being mediocre will at least start strong and present a good premise, but fizzle out, lacking a reasonable ending. This movie does it backwards--the first act is a confusing mess, and the best parts are near the end. Joey King is the main character, and she is pretty grating--the lines they give her to try to make her seem jaded and streetwise are just cringe. In fact, I didn't like ANY of the characters. None of them are well written. I didn't quite understand her motivation either--why was she in this situation? I'd say this one is for the teen audience, but it's a little too messed up. Because the main character doesn't seem to take anything seriously, it's like they are making light of sex trafficking, gang wars, racism, and addiction. They main thing I enjoyed is how she got revenge on one of the characters that did something horrible to her. But since none of the comedy works, I don't see any reason to ever recommend it.

I'm pretty easy going with movies, so maybe that's why I enjoyed the movie. I thought Joey King was entertaining in this movie. Overall it was a good movie.

But set in California. Without any wit, heart or humor. But with a lead actress so terribly miscast you can almost see her wanting to apologize after every F bomb she drops. We follow her over one night trying to navigate her way around various gangland/underworld perils to get back to the safety of her drug dealing pals. She gets involved in lots of nefarious druggy activities which are all blandly scripted and ludicrous to watch. You need to have an actor who goes at this film full throttle. And with this script that means nudity, a convincing nastiness to their character and someone who knows how to smoke and take drugs realistically on screen. Former teen nickleodeon star joey king is not that actress. This film is an utter failure. Even the casual violence and constant racial insults and slurs became boring to watch after about 15 minutes. By 20 minutes in i was aching to turn this off. But somehow i stuck it out to the end.