Little Miss Sunshine (2006) ***
R (for language, some sex and drug content.)
1 hr. 41 min.
written by: Michael Arndt
produced by: Albert Berger, David T. Friendly, Peter Saraf, Marc Turtletaub, & Ron Yerxa
directed by: Jonathon Ayton & Valerie Faris
Here's a great family film that I wouldn't recommend for the whole family. It's definitely for the adults (mature or not) in the family. It's a fractured and fractious comedy, spiked with dark laughs and genuine affection for its dysfunctional characters. Arndt's subtly lacerating screenplay takes stock clichés and infuses them with quirks that approach reality, albeit an extremely heightened sense of reality; you watch the movie and see a splintered, spirited family unit grow closer and approach something resembling understanding. To lay out the twists and turns of Little Miss Sunshine would rob those coming to the film fresh.
The Hoover family takes a road trip from
Albuquerque, New Mexico to the
Little Miss Sunshine pageant in
Redondo Beach, California, to fulfill the deepest wish of 7-year-old Olive (
Abigail Bresson), an ordinary little girl with big dreams. Her father, Richard (
Greg Kinnear) is a manic go-getter striving to sell his motivational nine-step technique to becoming a winner. Truth is, he's an annoying loser who insecurely leans on self-help to help others. Ironic. Her father, Sheryl (
Toni Colette) has her hands full with her suicidal brother and
Proust scholar Frank (
Steve Carell) and Richard's caustic, drugged out, potty-mouthed dad (
Alan Arkin). Then there's brother Dwayne (
Paul Dano) is going on nine months as a mute, studying the nihilistic works of Nietzsche.
When Olive wins a spot in the prestigious Little Miss Sunshine pageant in, the family pile into a past-its-prime Volkswagen van and head out towards the promise of a glittering future in California. What's great about the movie is that it doesn't unfold in an entirely predictable manner, often zigging where you might think it would zag – lining scenes with a patently absurd vibe, music video vets turned feature film directors Dayton and Faris swipe a few pages from the Woody Allen/Wes Anderson playbook, electing to play gags straight ahead and letting the laughs evolve naturally. As I said, I'm not gonna get into all the various dramedic situations the family gets in due to their tensions and personalities. We all know the myriad difficulties that can arise during a road trip. The finale of the film presents a scathingly satirical depiction of child beauty pageants, in which elementary school girls model swimsuits and strut onstage to dance music. It's great to finally see Olive demonstrate to her family and the audience what she has learned from her grandfather's private dance routine rehearsals. It's Olive and this routine that ultimately brings this formerly dysfunctional family together.
In retrospect (I guess all reviews are) I almost see this movie as a live-action version of "The Simpsons". It has the dysfunctional family that underneath it all really mean well. The father is a bumbling, lovable idiot (like Homer), the mother is doing everything she can to keep the family together (Marge), Arkin plays his Grandpa character in a cross-between Moe & Grandpa Simpson, while Dwayne is an amalgam of Bart and Nelson. Haw ha! Of course, lil Olive is akin to Lisa Simpson in her sunny disposition and resilient nature. Just an observation.
The directors have assembled a cast brimming with impeccable comic timing; Kinnear, Collette, Carell, Breslin, Dano and Arkin take Arndt's screenplay and give it a loose, improvised feel – if the Academy weren't so predictably out of touch, I'd say that Little Miss Sunshine might be due a raft of trophies come Oscar time....but what do I know? So few films truly worth sitting through have made their way into our multiplexes in 2006 that when a work like Little Miss Sunshine comes along, you can't recommend it strongly enough. It's a rib-tickling ray of light beamed from Hollywood, of all places, reminding you that, yes, in fact it is possible to be both moved and amused, with nary a toliet joke or product placement in sight.