Some people can drink for fun, and some people canāt, and figuring out youāre in the latter camp is rarely pretty. Smashed introduces a schoolteacher whoās bottoming out hard: Kate (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is a heavy drinker in her mid-20s, and āfun drunkā is fast dissolving into sad, destructive, smoking-crack-under-a-bridge drunk.
Smashed spends its first third or so establishing Kateās boozy bona fides: First, she lies to her students and her principal about why sheās vomiting at work, and then thereās the aforementioned crack incident. It isnāt long before sheās pissing in the corner of a convenience store at 2 a.m. after the clerk refuses to sell her any more booze. Where Smashed diverges from most alcoholic cautionary tales, though, is in acknowledging that drinking can be fun. Kate and her husband Charlie (Breaking Badās Aaron Paul) might drink all the time, but they often have a good time doing it. For a while, at least, booze transforms the raw materials of their lifeāsex and bike rides and late-night croquet gamesāinto intense, glamorous adventures.
But the consequences of Kateās drinking keep piling up, and when her laconic vice principal invites her to an AA meeting, she nervously explains to the group that, recently, āThings have gone from embarrassing to scary.ā Charlie supports her decision to get sober, but when his own partying continues unabated, the couple is left to figure out whether their entire relationship was based on sharing the type of good times Kate is no longer capable of having.
Winsteadās smart performance utterly grounds the film, even as Smashedās narrative feels underdevelopedāKateās drunken exploits are thoroughly documented, but her recovery itself is glossed over, focusing more on how her sobriety affects her relationships than on the process of getting sober in the first place. Where Smashed really succeeds, though, is in offering a nuanced, human portrait of an alcoholic. Kate is a good person who does bad things when sheās drunk, and the film doesnāt downplay the fact that Kate and Charlie had some pretty fun times when they were drinking together. Itās refreshing to see a movie that permits this kind of complexity, and itās impossible not to root for Kate as she finds the courage to take responsibility for her disease.