Little Miss Sunshine

Little Miss Sunshine

source: Little Miss Sunshine

Little Miss Sunshine was trying to be something it wasn't. It tried to be the amazing feel good dark comedy of the summer, however it just came off average. The problem isn't anyone thing, it just seems to have holes. There are truly beautiful moments, followed by really awkward moments. The acting is wonderful, but there doesn't seem to be an arc for any character; no one seems to progress at all. Steve Correll's(sorry for misspellings) character didn't slowly become less suicidal over the course of the plot, and Greg Kinnear's character seemed to become even more idiotic as time went on. The death of the grandfather and the bringing him along was taken straight from National Lampoon's Vacation, however, it was handled much differently, more serious. The only real character progression was in the character of Dwayne. His story was by far the most well put together. Yet, the setup in the beginning left you ready for a great ride. And, the acting was superb. There isn't any reason not to see this movie. Just don't get your hopes up. Come in with low expectations and you may be surprised.

Just before I sat down to watch the film LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE I was leafing through a copy of Douglas Adam's final anthology of writings called The Salmon of Doubt. In an article he wrote called "Turncoat" he mused "I wonder if we don't have too much comedy these days...nowadays everybody's a comedian, even the weather girls... We laugh at everything. Not intelligently anymore, not with sudden shock, astonishment, or revelation, just relentlessly and meaninglessly." After the movie was over I couldn't get that thought out of my head. Here is a film that attempts to be dark, attempts to be charming, attempts to be edgy, attempts to be independent, and is yet drops the ball because in the end it has nothing cohesive to say. Olive Hoover (Abigail Breslin) is the cutest little kid in the world. The kind of kid who just looks at the world with wide-eyed wonder. She sweet even if the world around her isn't so. Her Dad (Greg Kinnear) is a bad motivational speaker and an even worse role model, her mom (Toni Collette) is far to permissive, her brother (Paul Dano) hates his life and has taken a vow of silence, her grandpa (Alan Arkin) snorts heroin, and her Uncle Frank (Steve Carrell) has shown up on their doorstep after a botched attempt to take his own life. This motley family is about to make a 700 mile trip in a beat up VW Van with a busted clutch to get Olive to the National Little Miss Sunshine beauty contest in Redondo Beach. Will they survive each other? Or will Olive's dream of becoming a beauty queen come crashing down? LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE is the kind of movie that will leaving you feeling good at the end only because it ends on such a high note. The last ten minutes of this film are easily the best. They're what you're going to talking about as you leave the theater. As for the other 90 minutes well that's up in the air. The film is far to moody. There is a fine line between dark humor and just plain darkness. LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE spends too much of it early scenes developing realistic characters. They laugh, they cry, and then the film betrays this honesty by asking them to fall into farce. The screenplay goes into auto-pilot and the characters turn into independent film clichés'. The actors do the best they can with the material but alas the film feels so artificial. You start to see some themes pop out that would make good talking points in an article or interview, but in the context of the film it's all just filler. Every character gets to wax poetic then they get to do something silly. Then the film makes some blanket statement about how life is as phony as a beauty contest, there is an act of rebellion, and then everybody hugs. The films biggest problem is that the screenplay is such a rip off of NATIONAL LAMPOON'S VACATION. Except instead of Wally World the Hoovers are on their way to Redondo Beach and there is a Proust scholar in the car. There is even a scene in which a dead body shows up and they have to put it in their car. I was waiting for Randy Quaid to show up and ask Greg Kinnear's character for money. That's what this film needed, Uncle Eddie! LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE is a "dark comedy" that's far too dark and not really all that funny. It has it's moments, and on the surface it is very sweet and charming. Little Abigail Breslin steals the show, giving Olive a wisdom beyond her age, and a wide-eyed wonder. But unfortunately the film is not worth the price of admission. I'd skip this beauty contest.

I don't know where to begin with this one. It starts off well enough, and goes on that way for fifty minutes or so. Never great, I'd say, but it's a perfectly acceptable little indie comedy. Alan Arkin and Steve Carell are both excellent, and Toni Collette and Greg Kinnear are fine, too. But then it takes a majorly wrong turn (think grandma from National Lampoon's Vacation, miscalculated at an astronomical level), follows that up with some incredibly forced bits and ends up at one of the most outrageously appalling climaxes I have seen in a long time. I went from moderately enjoying it to downright hating it. It's too bad, too, because I do like some of the things it's trying to say, some of the things it's trying to do. But what a disaster! I guess I'm the only one who feels that way, though. My movie-going companion (whose opinion I respect, I should add) was enamored with the picture all the way through, even laughing uproariously at what I thought were some of the most cringe-inducing moments in some time. It's already ranked on IMDb's top 250, though that's hardly a sign of high quality. Oh well. I'm happy enough in hating it. Easily the worst I've seen so far this year.

Its a simple strategy. Introduce us to some damaged folks, folks that seem way beyond what we would accept. Then spend some time with them in such a way that we get to know them. Then at the end, compare them to "ordinary" people so as to trick us into grounding ourselves in the "weirdos." Along the way, give us quirky vignettes, alternately endearing and humorous. This complies in gentle ways, following the template so closely it might have been designed by a committee. This is where successful independent films are now, I guess. Sad. In normal circumstances, I'd just relax and go along for the ride, like I did for, say "Miss Congeniality." But there's a nagging reminder that something here isn't fair. The denouement of the story — the place where we actually see the rest of the world — is a kiddie beauty pageant. This is the place where all the talk about dividing the world into winners and losers is embossed on us. What we see are horrible little people, absolutely revolting freaks. Its a truly damning thing. And it works as intended. We immediately realize where our own lives are centered — or where we would like them to be. But look closer. What we are revolted about is the cult of little-girl-cuteness. It isn't as deep a cult in the US as it is in Japan, St Petersberg or Thailand. But it is in movies here and essentially everywhere. We are charmed by girls. Its one of the most reliable parts of the cinematic vocabulary. I saw this film paired with "Forbidden Games," which is a truly wonderful experience. So here we are given a show that celebrates the cuteness of little girls and we are repulsed. But what have we been watching for over an hour? A family disaster that revolves around the cuteness of our little girl. Its a relentless cuteness show, which we allow in part because we know our actress has been made less "pretty" by over-sized glasses (another movie shortcut) and a prosthetic belly. But its cute that we are sold. So in the damning at the end, I damned myself and felt dirty coming out. Movies do this a lot, especially teen movies that poke fun at teen humor and then have all the jokes dependent on that same humor. More clever ones do it with heavier subjects. "American Psycho." But this is just too much. The writers give us an escape hatch. We can pretend it isn't cuteness and innocent charm, but a more prurient interest we are damning. The contestants we see do try to look sexy and our girl's routine is targeted at blowing that up. So we can pretend it is sex that is the reversal. But be honest. It isn't. Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

Wow. I'm stunned. Every once in a while a movie comes along that is jaw-droppingly horrible to the point that it leaves your mouth hanging open. I lack sufficient terms to express how trite and repellent I find this simpering movie. It's an exhausted "human spirit" movie so cloying that it needs to be taken off life support. From the first time I saw the TV commercial which featured the hackneyed ruse of getting the whole family in one vehicle for the duration of a movie, I suspected the script would have difficulty making that premise believable. It certainly fails there, but that's the least of its problems. But still, the wealth of good reviews drew me to buy a ticket. My initial reservations were right. This script is an inept piece of garbage long before you evaluate it on moral grounds, where it collapses spectacularly. The family here is a mix of characters so drippy and dense that they never realize their dumpy, uncoordinated, bespectacled daughter isn't the Junior Miss type. It takes them exactly one pageant (following a needless cross country trip) to figure that out. The same family doesn't realize that a heroin-snorting, horndog grandfather shouldn't be the one teaching their adolescent daughter her beauty pageant dance number. Why not go all the way and include a "funny scene" of grampa molesting her? The setup is practically there; a scene so distasteful feels like it's just off-screen (or on the cutting room floor) in this wholly objectionable movie. Long after a ridiculously unbelievable "chance meeting" in a gas station, long after paper-deep villains have been thrown at the screen, long after the annoying Murphy's Law plot line is exhausted, comes the most sick, saccharine, crappy moment in all of film history which involves a family attempting to redeem their seven-year old daughters failed, inappropriate talent routine (a strip tease) by joining her on stage. Sexualizing a seven year old girl without her being developmentally able to understand it... mmm, that's comedy gold. This "edgy material" is about as palatable as a cup of bleach. I'm not one to look for messages but here we've got something like "Let's all support each other as we swim up the cr*p river of life!" I'm sure it's supporters think I've missed the point and that the humor is just dark. It's not dark. Making a dark comedy is an art. This comedy has no edge in it's delivery. It's filmed straight. It's acted and presented ineptly. It's about as edgy as a smutty episode of Seventh Heaven. This is the rotten family-values homily to end them all. Drawing big saccharine payoffs to support a family values theme also places this squarely in mainstream whitebread entertainment. It makes perfect sense that idiotic Hollywood would nominate this tripe for a bunch of Oscars, but I can't believe I respect people who like this atrocity. The Oscars have become so gratingly self-impressed, and the nominees so limp, that all you can really do anymore is root against films you don't want to have any further influence on the culture. I am so glad it lost the Best Picture award last night; Today it starts a long descent to the bottom of time's toilet, exactly where it belongs, where it will be forgotten.

I have to admit, I was drawn to this movie because of the great cast and a lot of positive word of mouth. I watched the movie in a very good mood and when it was over, I said, what is the big deal? I did not laugh, I did not cry, I did not feel anything, except that I had seen this movie a dozen or more times already. It really was nothing special. Arkin's comedic performance was a rehashed role that I have seen others play. I remember a film called "Flirting With Disaster" which was kind of a road movie as well, it was better than this. "Raising Arizona" was much funnier than this. The so-called side-splitting ending with the dance to Super Freak was so tipped in commercials that you knew what was coming. Moreover, the dance just keeps going and going, it got so tedious and unfunny. I'm sorry, I don't want to be a cynic, but this film is just being played up way too much and I cannot believe that it was nominated for Best Picture, it was a weak year, but not that weak.

Comedies about families usually come in one of two genres. Often featuring dysfunctional families (are those two words redundant?), they are either broad and goofy ("Cheaper by the Dozen") or dark and abstruse ("The Royal Tenenbaums"). Driving its Volkswagon bus down the middle of these two extremes is "Little Miss Sunshine", a comedy both inclusive and exclusive, one that some will get entirely, while others will whiff on to the same degree. The title stems from a beauty pageant in which seven-year old Olive (Abigail Breslin of "Signs") competes. For a good portion of the film, the contest serves as a MacGuffin of sorts, putting an already odd mix of family members on the road in bizarre situations that call Vegas Vacation to mind. But "Sunshine" is far more than the slapstick of "Vacation". It mixes humor both broad and subtle humor into a strange brew of comedy, poignancy, lessons, and life. Huge and deep issues are addressed, topics like death, dreams, and failure. Yet somehow the movie doesn't feel heavy. You'll walk out with a smile on your face because the movie sensibly touches on these issues, realizing that stuff happens and life continues, that the handling of adversity is often what defines people. And above all, there is family, which you're stuck with, for better and worse. "Sunshine" may not grab you right away, which is part of its power. It burns slowly, introducing the family members to the viewing outsiders through observation, then putting the viewers in the bus with them as they enter a foreign world. All this is done without lapsing into melodrama and without losing steam as the movie chugs toward the climactic final scene, continuously building momentum along the way, before promptly getting out on top. Rather crude at times, "Sunshine" is not a movie for children, nor is it for anyone who takes life or movies too seriously. But if you excel at finding the askance humor in life and film, then you will relish this offbeat look at a collection of family dynamics perhaps only slightly stranger than most, although definitely more extreme. Bottom Line: One of the year's best, and likely its best comedy. 8 of 10.

I file this one just above that silly wine movie a couple years ago, the one every pretentious person liked but was shot like crap? I disliked it so much that I forgot the name... I really wanted to like this movie more than I did. I like the actors. But there's no way those people were from the same family, and frankly, the story was contrived and derivative. It was basically National Lampoon's Vacation but without the wally world. Even the dead relative, the falling apart of the family car. Just updated for the new "hollywood view" of family that closely resembles an actor's or director's screwed up life, but not so much "fly over" country. Not to mention the whole "everyone's life can fall apart within 24 hours" cliché. But the moral was a good one, and there were a couple, and only a couple, truly funny parts, so it has that going for it.