The Smokers

don't bother renting it!!! despite the fact that there was a female director, this movie seemed more like male fantasy masquerading as female fantasy. the premise of the movie is basically, "what happens when you give hot chicks who love sex guns?" the whiny statement which the movie is trying to make is "you don't know what it's like to be a girl!!!"

well, i do know what it's like, and i think it's pathetic that these girls pretend to be feminists when they define themselves by how many guys they've slept with or what sorts of guys they've slept with. they feel powerful because they're wielding guns, but they're weak without them. these ladies deserve our pity!!! no, wait, they don't even deserve our attention!!!

This really is as bad as people have commented. I thought anything would be at least watchable with Dominique and Thora in it, but I was wrong. Absolute, jaw-dropping, unbelievably bad performances from everyone involved, in wildly distracting outfits and makeup. And I like the actresses - in other movies. I liked Lolita, American Beauty, Ghost World. What happened?

Thankfully, it has been a little while since I saw it and it is starting to fade from my memory.

The plot, which was hard to determine, was plain silly. Since when does a tile bathroom go up in flames from a Bic lighter? Oh yeah, at the end of this crap.

I rented this in hopes of seeing, at the least, a film with some memorable lines or fun moments, and hoped that possibly I was stumbling across an underrated, obscure gem. I didn't even get any memorable lines or fun moments. It seems that what the film is trying to do is show a feminist view of sex, but the viewpoint doesn't go very deep or really seem that intriguing. It hardly even makes sense. The characters don't do much to support this attempt at deepness, and the acting is lousy all around. One of the main girls is trying her best to be an Angelina Jolie type, but she has zero charisma or screen presence. I think the best acting in the film was from a minor female character in a bar that one of the male characters was trying to pick up, and she had about three lines. Seriously, the acting is that noticeably bad. Thora Birch must be trying to earn indie cred by appearing in this right around the time her career was taking off, and she does have one of the better moments towards the beginning involving playing a Russian roulette-type game with an almost completely loaded gun, but the fact that the gun is loaded is the only fascinating part about this scene because her acting isn't particularly stellar. Dominique Swain doesn't even shine at all, and she has definitely saved some films I've seen in the past. The pot smoking seemed like a gimmick tacked onto the film. It's a shame. This movie looks good on paper, but suffers from weakness factoring in from all aspects that go into the making of it.

What was up with this film? I thought I was in for an edgy, interesting film. What I got was a montage of bad acting and even worse directing/writing. It just baffled me who would watch this movie and think it was good. The acting was so overdone. The camera work looked like the actors themselves shot it, heck - they may have done better! The plot was supposed to be in your face, it was just dumb. The fire scene looked like a skit from Saturday Night Live it was so unbelievably awful. These girls need to take some more acting lessons, or better yet - get a new agent or fire whoever suggested these parts to them. RUN FROM THIS MOVIE!!! RUN FAR, FAR AWAY!!!!!!!

"The Smokers" is a shabby flick about three high school senior females who smoke (hence the title) and, for reasons unknown, go off on a bitch bender about the control they believe males have over females particularly in regard to sex. So, armed with a hand gun they set out to level the playing field. The film is apparently supposed to be a slice-of-life coming-of-age drama but the production is so messy it could also be a dark comedy or satire but fits best in the catch-all genre of "bad movie". The players look stupid and behave stupidly though the film does almost manage to achieve poignancy a few times. Given poor quality of everything from screenplay to direction to supporting cast acting to sound to costuming to makeup....etc., there's little reason for anyone to waste their time on this flick. (D)