Directors: Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Farris
Format: DVD
DVD Features: alternate ending, commentary, deleted scenes, music vidso
Starring: Alan Arkin, Greg Kinnear, Steve Carell, Toni Collette
Trailer
When I first saw ads for this movie, I wasn’t very interested. It seemed a little too “heartwarming” for my usual taste. Gradually, I began to hear more and more about it. The thing that really surprised me was that most of the people I talked to who gave it a good review were men. It struck me as odd that a film that seemed to target a very tender audience appealed to such a different demographic. So, I decided to give it a shot. Of course, the fact that it won two Academy Awards didn’t hurt either.
In a surprise decision, seven-year-old Olive has been selected as a contestant in the Little Miss Sunshine competition. Short of time before the beauty pageant’s check-in deadline, her father and mother realize they’ve got to pack up the whole family and deliver Olive to the stage themselves. Her coach Grandfather, suicidal Uncle Frank and silent brother Dwayne join them in the family’s dilapidated, yellow VW bus and head off across state lines. A string of mishaps threatens to bring the whole adventure down on their heads.
What makes Little Miss Sunshine entertaining is not the plot particularly, but rather the dysfunctional cast of characters. Olive herself is charming and fairly even tempered, aside from her obsession with the contest. The actress, Abigail Breslin, was nominated for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role at the 2006 Academy Awards for Little Miss Sunshine. Alan Arkin, her grandfather and pageant coach in the movie, won Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting role that year. His character has, perhaps, the most disturbing set of vices out of the group. Just prior to their road trip, Grandpa was ejected from a nursing home for snorting heroin and his enthusiasm for pornography actually saves the family at one point in the film. Olive’s Uncle Frank, played by Steve Carell, is a suicidal, homosexual, Proust scholar. It’s strange to see the actor playing this role with such a straight-face, but he manages to be funny anyway; maybe even more so because of it. The girl’s brother Dwayne (Paul Dano) has taken a vow of silence, inspired by his love for Nietzsche and his desire to become an Air Force pilot. He may have been my favorite out of the group.
Olive’s parents are quite a pair as well. Her father Richard (Greg Kinnear), aspires to a career as a motivational speaker and lectures ad nauseum about what types of people make “winners”. Ironically, he’s the biggest “loser” out of them all. I really dislike the roles Kinnear is routinely cast in. He plays the loser quite well, but that doesn’t convince me to like the losers he plays. Richard’s wife Sheryl (Toni Collette) is prone to chain smoking just to cope with the rest of the crew and consistently seems at her wits end. The two of them seem to barely be holding their marriage together. Last, but not least, is the VW bus, which is a character in and of itself. Perhaps it’s a metaphor for the rest of the bunch or for the screwed up journey they experience. Regardless, the vehicle has as many problems as each of the family members. It has to be push started before each leg of the trip, the back door falls off its hinges, and it barely runs.
I was surprised by Little Miss Sunshine. Pleasantly so, because it wasn’t a typical, cheesy “family” film. Several of the characters had a level of depth I wasn’t expecting and the grim humor of Uncle Frank’s situation and Grandpa’s situation appealed to me. Although the film had a distinctly “indie” quality to it, it still reeked of Hollywood. I don’t mean to say that all Hollywood movies are terrible, but there’s something generally synthetic about them. The performances, for the most part, were fantastic. Even though most of the subject matter is depressing in nature, Little Miss manages not to be a downer film. The ending, with all of the JonBenet type girls, was a tad bit disturbing. I think it was meant to be. See Little Miss Sunshine if you’re looking for a movie that’s entertaining, slightly down-tempo, funny and unusual.
Overall Rating: 3 ½
Hottie Rating: 0
Alternate viewing: I Heart Huckabees
Official site
IMDB site
Boston.com review
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