So, incredibly high Jane makes a list of things to do, including buy more pot to make her roommate more cupcakes, go to her acting audition, and pay the power bill in person before the company cuts off their electricity. That is how Jane's day begins... but it goes on well into sunset, where you will find Jane back on the Ferris wheel, with the original Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx in her arms and several angry people below her, ready to send her to prison.
Tropes associated with this work include:
- Abhorrent Admirer: Brevin is this to Jane; she's never really been interested in or interacted with him besides him staring at her every time he comes over to hang out with Steve.
- A Simple Plan: Jane has to get weed to replace her roommates cupcakes, bake new cupcakes, go to her audition, and pay the power bill. Things go downhill starting from baking the new cupcakes.
- Buffy Speak: Jane's Rousing Speech is actually just a profanity riddle rant about how everything is like, fucked.
- The Cameo: Jane randomly runs into Carrot Top at Venice Beach.
- Can't Get Away with Nuthin': where ever Jane goes, people seem to immediately notice she is extremely high.
- Can't You Read the Sign?: Steve the roommate has left a batch of cupcakes in the fridge with a paper telling Jane, specifically, to not eat them.
- Cloudcuckoolander - Jane becomes this after eating an entire plate of cupcakes laced with marijuana. She usually walks around with a buzz, but is a little more out of it, to say the least, after the cupcakes...
- Crush Filter: How Brevin sees Jane, at least until he has to deal with her for an extended period of time.
- Delusions of Eloquence: Jane launches into what she thinks is a Rousing Speech about worker's rights at the hot dog plant, but after seeing the shocked reaction from the boss and two workers, the film reqwinds showing Jane just rambling incohorently about how everything is fucked.
- Drugs Are Bad: This might not have been
the intended message of the movie, but Jane's marijuana habit completely wrecks her life. - Erudite Stoner: Jane and Steve have a surprisingly cogent discussion about the economics of the drug trade while smoking.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: Brevin forgets his wallet on the dashboard of his car when going to the dentist, and a subtitle pops up saying it will be stolen in ten minutes. When Brevin and Jane leave the dentist's office, the car window has been smashed and the wallet taken.
- Flush the Evidence: paranoid, and thinking a cleaner is the police Searching the Stalls, Jane flushes the precious bag of government weed down the toilet.
- Forgetful J Ones: Jane has keeps forgetting what she was supposed to be doing.
- Forgot to Pay the Bill: Jane needs to pay the power bill in person, and Roommate Steve left her cash for that purpose. The cash gets used on weed, and as the day unravels, Jane just fully forgets she was supposed to do that, and at the end, Steve comes home to a ransacked apartment with no power.
- "Have a Nice Day" Smile: The poster features Jane, high as a kite, hugging a giant yellow smiley face.
- How We Got Here: the film opens with Jane on the Ferris wheel at Venice Beach, wondering out loud how she got there.
- I Love the Dead: Dealer Steve and Jane are convinced Roommate Steve fucks skulls. If the ending scene is to be trusted, he does.
- Intoxication Ensues: Jane starts her day off with a bong hit and playing video games, and when hit with the munchies, gorges on the plate of cupcakes left in the fridge. A while later she realizes that she is far more high than she expected and realizes the cupcakes were made with weed. The rest of the movie follows her trying to get through her day while extremely stoned.
- Imagine Spot: Jane prepares for her audition by reading the line out loud to herself, getting more Large Ham as she hears an imagined crowd cheer her on. Later, when she realizes she got a folder with an original copy of the Communist Manifesto, Jane imagines selling it for a fortune on eBay.
- Mikey starts fantasizing about Jane flirting with him as they're stuck in traffic.
- Large Ham: Preparing for the audition, Jane convinces herself that the louder she delivers the line the more applause she gets, so when she gets in front of the director, she belts the line out from the top of her lungs.
- Lighter and Softer - Gregg Araki's last movie was Mysterious Skin, a drama dealing with sexual abuse. Because of that movie's ultra serious subject matter, he wanted to make a movie with much lighter subject matter, which is how he came to make a Stoner Flick. Hell, this film is Lighter and Softer when compared to Araki's comedies, like The Doom Generation, which is ultra violent and disturbing.
- Mass "Oh, Crap!": Everyone's reaction when Jane drops the Communist Manifesto from the ferris wheel.
- Marijuana Is LSD: Zig-zagged. The effects of being too high off of edibles is portrayed pretty realistically, although Jane also has some visual hallucinations, such as the titulat Smiley Face in the sky.
- One Crazy Night: Inverted, the plot takes place over one day, but Jane's intoxication leads her from one absurd situation to another.
- One-Steve Limit: Averted, Jane's roommate is called Steve, as is her weed dealer. When she gets late to the Venice Hemp Fest, he asks the two old guys there if they know his dealer "called Steve", which prompts them to ask if he has two arms and two legs and a head.
- Ridiculous Repossession: Dealer Steve warns Jane that she needs to pay him by three o'clock, or he and his friends will come over and take her and Roommate Steve's furniture. and they do.
- Road Trip Plot: Jane needs to get to her audition, pay the power bill and the Hemp Fest at Venice Beach, but keeps getting sidetracked.
- Sensory Overload: all noises sounds really loud to Jane, and waiting in the dentist lobby with a crying baby and the sound of dental drills become overwhelming for her.
- Stoner Flick: Follows the exploits of Jane, an aspiring actress with a heavy smoking habit who tries to accomplish a couple of errands while catastrophically high from a plate of weed cupcakes.
