Who are the people who like movies like this? Where are they? Do they actully think these films are funny or is it just that no one wants to admit they aren't into a movie that all the other hip folks have dubbed ultra-cool?
Little Miss Sunshine was the hit of 2006 Sundance Film Festival (strike one). It belongs to the despised Clever Comedy genre (stike two). Invented by Wes Anderson, Clever Comedies are films that try to be funny by having every character have some obvious and annoying quirk and that a sort of directoral detachment, where the artist looks back as his/her own characters and indicate how superior they are to find them funny.
Little Miss Sunshine is apotheosis of this genre, which in a way is a good thing, because it could mean that people will stop making them. The people in this film are not just quirky, but psycotic, and the film not funny, but disturbing. Through some plot contrivance, they entire Hoover family has to take a van from New Mexico to California so that young Olive (Abigail Breslin) can compete in a child beauty pagent. Yes- it's road movie (strike three)! Dad (Greg Kinnear) is a motivational speaker and obsessed with winning, Mom (Toni Collette) is has a patronizing Oprah-like outlook on life, Uncle Frank (Steve Carrell) is suicidal (something the audience of this movie can identify with), Grandpa (Alan Arkin) has a dirty mouth and sex obsessed, like all old people in comedies and Olive's brother Dwayne (Paul Dano) has taken a vow of silence.
This family needs serious, serious help. I do not think it would have been impossible to make a comedy about a disfunctional family, but it would have to be a satire somewhat grounded in realty, a la It's a Gift. Such a film would also not have to make the mistake of thinking that extreme characteraztions are inherintly funny, but realize that some context is neccessary.
Before the family got the beauty pagent, I had already decided that I hated the movie, but at the contest the movie goes from being unfunny and slightly disturibng into the realm of just plain wrong. In the days when the Jean-Benet Ramsey murder still makes headlines and To Catch a Predator is a popular show on MS-NBC, the filmmakers shuld have known that Olive's talent contest is just plain unforgivable and creepy. I wonder how Abigail Breslin, (who is the most appealing person in the film, mainly because she is the only closest to normal) is going to look back on this twenty years. I wonder how many creeps have started stalking her already.
Looking back on the picture as a whole, I wonder how many people who praised this film actully liked it. What kind of person likes these people. I did manage to make it to the end, but only while reading and surfing the internet. And then I realized something amazing- I would rather see The Royal Tenenbaums all the way through than see this movie again.
Little Miss Sunshine (2006)