Smiling Friends
2020
Original language: English
- animation
- comedy
- sci-fi & fantasy
The story
Smiling Friends Inc. is a small company whose main purpose is to bring happiness and make people smile. The series follows the day-to-day lives and misadventures of its representatives, the lazy, cynical Charlie, and the cheerful, optimistic Pim, as they try to cheer up and comfort the troubled people who call their company's hotline. They receive seemingly simple requests but the jobs turn out to be more complicated than they seem, making it difficult to bring happiness to the world.
What it’s like
Bright, flat cartoon colour with loose, wobbly hand-drawn edges and a deliberately crude, almost sketchbook finish, set against bubbly pastel offices, cheap-looking suburban streets and sudden swerves into grotesque surreal worlds. The sound is buoyant and cheerful, with jaunty kazoo-like music and chirpy electronic stings that clash on purpose with the bleakness on screen. Its vibe is giddy, deadpan absurdism: a sweetly broken office comedy that feels like a cartoon you watch with your feet up on a late weeknight or as a loud, silly companion while you cook. Episodes are short and quick, each one a tight run of escalating bad ideas, cut with sudden non-sequitur detours. The emotional register sits between cynicism and tenderness, as a sour, lazy employee and his relentlessly upbeat partner slowly reveal some affection for the strangers they're failing to help. Expect crude jokes, adult language and sexual innuendo, plus frequent cartoon violence and gross-out gags, all played for laughs and rarely lingering. It suits viewers who like adult animated absurdism with a bruised, sincere heart and who don't mind their cheer served with a side of mess.
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