Christmas is just around the corner, an ideal time to recover some of the great movies set during those holidays. With the series it is already somewhat more complicated, since normally you have to go to special episodes instead of titles in which that celebration has a more or less important weight in the plot. With ‘smiley’ we don’t have that problem.
Adaptation of the homonymous play by Guillem Clua -who also writes all the scripts for the series-, ‘Smiley’ is a romantic comedy that is also quite dramatic. Throughout 8 episodes, various love stories are explored with great ease, to the point that one continues to see chapters as if they were eating pipes. Of course, it is a series that homophobes should flee from, but the rest of the public will probably find enough reasons to enjoy it.
Fluid, fresh and entertaining
The main axis of ‘Smiley’ is the unexpected relationship that arises between Álex and Bruno. Totally opposite on paper, they meet as a result of a curious mistake and the attraction between them is evident, as is their resistance to openly acknowledging their feelings. The Netflix series pays special attention to this during the first episodes, later playing more with the way they both deal with the absence of the other, because, of course, it wasn’t going to be as easy as meeting, falling in love, being happy. and eat partridges.
Curiously, that’s not where that more dramatic vocation of the series that I mentioned before comes on the scene, since ‘Smiley’ tells several love stories. It is there where that clear component of an almost Hollywood-style romantic comedy is diluted in favor of a somewhat more bitter approach. I wouldn’t dare say realistic, but it does add another dimension to the series, and it suits it quite well.
There it is true that the inevitable problem arises that not all the stories that ‘Smiley’ tells have the same interest and that some viewers may miss that more attention is paid to the plot of Álex and Bruno in certain phases of the series, but the bottom line is that even in its lowest moments, it still has enough hook to, at least, have an entertaining time.
Everything in its place
This is helped by the fact that he jumps agilely between the different intertwined stories instead of never stopping more than necessary on any of them. For my part, there is the particularity that surely the one that motivated me the least is also the one with the greatest presence pepón grandsonthat if it is not what I liked the most in ‘Smiley’, it has stayed close.
In addition, visually there are also several details that first help to create and then reinforce the identity of the series, especially in relation to the use of split screen or parallel editing. It’s not like it’s something that is often mentioned, but it does appear from time to time and It fits very well with that freshness that the series transmits in general lines.
Nor do I forget the need for ‘Smiley’ to be close to the viewer, both when it flirts more with the frivolous and when it opts for a more dramatic emotional blow. Here perhaps the comparison with ‘Love Actually’ is excessive -especially since there are not as many stories here as there and the variety is also necessarily smaller-, but one of the strengths of the Netflix series is just the same as the celebrated film of Richard Curtisbecause in both there is a part of the idealized vision of love, but without leaving aside the other, more painful side of that same coin.
Finally I would like to highlight the work of the rest of the cast. They all fit like a glove in their respective characters -although the chemistry they share is great Carlos Cuevas and Miki Esparbe shines with its own light-, thus achieving that what is told and how it is done find a luxury ally so that above any type of limitation, a group that does not seek so much the admirable as the entertaining and contagious triumphs.
In short
‘Smiley’ is one of the best Netflix series of this year and it also easily slips into the most notable Spanish fiction on the platform. In addition, it works very well as a romantic comedy, offering both a more or less idyllic vision of the subgenre and other more dramatic ones. The only pity is that I wish it had more episodes, something that doesn’t happen very often…
In Espinof: