I Smile Back

Silverman is completely riveting as she tries and flails to do right, and her physical performance is remarkable: a change in her gait or expression signals the switch in her personality from human to addict.

While it's a cliche to praise a performance requiring some harsh, fairly explicit on-screen behavior and interactions, Silverman's doing the opposite of grandstanding here.

What propels the film forcefully along is Silverman, who pulls us down so deeply inside Laney’s sickness that everything else seems to fade away (much as it does in the character’s own life).

Without pandering to audience sympathy, Silverman's dark shadings lend something unexpected and real to the role.

Sarah Silverman is far and away the best part of I Smile Back, a strained entry in the Mad Housewife genre.

Individual scenes can be tense but the arc as a whole lacks momentum. I Smile Back should have been devastating. Silverman is willing to take you there. What it ends up being is frustrating.

No one who sees I Smile Back will question if Silverman was right for the role, they will simply question whether this was a story that needed to be told in the first place.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

How should an ideal mother behave when she's haunted by her bad past. The film is about a small family of two little kids and their parents, but all the focus was on the mother who is a drug addict and struggling with mental illness, yet care a lot for her children. But how long this happy family stays that way is the film going to reveal in its entire narration. Based on the book of the same name, half a million budget film, has a decent cast who have given their best for it. This is not a film you watch to enjoy, but a film about the families around us. This is a depiction of the real world story, like not all the families are happier as we see them from the outside. There are some secrets in them, which sets a bad example for their own children once they come to know the true nature of their parents. But some would decide to fight hard to make everything come back to the normal and some won't. That is where film derives, how it all ends makes this film unique from the other similar ones. I think this film was decent with an important topic. Not everyone would end up happy with their watch, because the story won't end up as they thought. The novel was written by a woman, so this is a woman's perspective tale and quite neatly told story. Not a bad direction or the screenplay, surprising the production quality was too good. Seems it is a quite family type film for involving kids, certainly the theme was very strong, so definitely for adults only. It is neither worth nor a waste of time, only if you come across to it and has no other choice, you can give it try. 6.5/10

Mental Illness in its beauty. If you are interested in that matter or want to feel better about yourself - go for it. The movie is really hard to watch. Like someone in the reviews described it as 'brutal'. It is, because of the captured helplessness of people who had a problem with living and staying alive every day, and in that sense - are also crazy. I cried from the beginning to the end, so I guess it's not a popcorn movie or netflix and chill.

While sometimes painful to watch, "I Smile Back" is nevertheless compelling for its breakthrough dramatic performance by Sarah Silverman as an upscale housewife whose life is slipping away from her, partly due to circumstances and partly due to her own making. Some elements of the narrative don't feel fully fleshed out, but then maybe that's the point -- Sliding over the edge isn't something we always understand or for which we can pinpoint a definitive cause. Still, despite these shortcomings, the film is a tremendous showcase for an actress who has a lot more in the tank than she's typically been given credit for.

A film about a person with mental problems. We see her past, made her problems worse, we see her present, she doesn't seem to want to get better. Oh well. The movie story line is very hard to sit and watch. There are so many poor people, homeless people, who need help but can't afford it. She can and just blows it off. So why did the producers make this movie? What is it telling me? Let's feel sorry for the 1%? I don't think so.