Smartass

15 year old delinquent skater girl Freddie (Joey King) leaves suburban San Diego to join Nick and his group of petty criminal druggies. When a needle is found in the van by LAPD, she takes the fall and in short order, she gets released from jail. It's a rough neighborhood and she skirts danger every step of the way. Meanwhile, Nick is trying to close a deal with Donny.

This is trying to be quirky indie but mostly, it comes off as quirky lowlife stupid. Freddie is suppose to be a smartass but she's not so smart. I don't blame Joey King whom I hope for better things. It's all in the writing. Freddie has no common sense or any sense for that matter. She's written as a smart character who does dumb things. She is too annoying and too self-destructive to root for. Joey King can't play dumb anyways. This could still work as a night road trip through LA but the movie keeps going back to Nick, Donny, and the rest of them. As flawed as Freddie is, Joey King is still compelling enough to make this work but Jena Serbu doesn't know where is the best part of the story.

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.

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!

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.

I watched this on Amazon streaming, only because Joey King is in it, as 15-yr-old Freddie. As she is preparing to skip out she tells her mother, just imagine I am at summer camp, if you don't hear from me for a week don't worry.

The thing about Freddie is she goes into any situation totally unafraid, whether it be jail or a drug deal with guns pointed at everyone. It is as if she can't get hurt, but others may get killed and often do. She always "smartasses" herself out of any situation.

It isn't a good movie per se but a few of the situations are really entertaining. Like the time she caught a ride, the guy drugged her, put her in a cheap motel room and "sold" her for $200. When she realizes what is going on and what was expected she went into action to escape and even get money from the motel manager by threatening to expose his scheme.

No question Joey King is the only good thing about this movie, all the other actors and characters are worthless. Most viewers will not enjoy this movie.