Little Miss Sunshine

I watched Little Miss Sunshine, which recently came out on dvd, last night. From Jim Beaver on IMDB:

Olive is a little girl with a dream: winning the Little Miss Sunshine contest. Her family wants her dream to come true, but they are so burdened with their own quirks, neuroses, and problems that they can barely make it through a day without some disaster befalling them. Olive’s father Richard is a flop as a motivational speaker, and is barely on speaking terms with her mother. Her uncle Frank, a renowned Proust scholar, has attempted suicide following an unsuccessful romance with a male graduate student. Her brother Dwayne, a fanatical follower of Nietzsche, has taken a vow of silence, which allows him to escape somewhat from the family whose very presence torments him. And Olive’s grandfather is a ne’er-do-well with a drug habit, but at least he enthusiastically coaches Olive in her contest talent routine. Circumstances conspire to put the entire family on the road together with the goal of getting Olive to the Little Miss Sunshine contest in far off California.

Olive is cute in her lack of cuteness, the kind of cute that people attribute to most little kids that are generally quite uncute. Apparently actress Abigail Breslin wore a fat suit to portray Olive; I did not know that fat suits came in 9-year old sizes. Greg Kinnear as a determined-not-to-fail failure is great, and his constant bickering with Frank was excellent. Toni Collette, the (hot) mom is the only relatively normal person in the family, and she acts as the anchor trying to keep everything together. I would have to say my favorite out of the family was Steve Carell as Frank, which is unusual, because normally I don’t like Carell. I’ve always found his over the top antics that are typical of him to be more annoying than funny, and even though I love The Office, I find his character to be only barely tolerable (which I guess is true that the others in the office only barely tolerate Michael Scott as well.) However, in LMS, he was able to make funny an extremely humorless character, a morose and post-suicidal Proust scholar. Rounding out the cast is Paul Dano as Olive’s half-brother Dwayne, who is mute for 3/4ths of the movie, screams a whole bunch in one scene, and then doesn’t say a whole lot after that; and Alan Arkin as Grandpa, who swears too much, loves porn, hates Frank, and has a cocaine addiction (”Let me tell ya, don’t do that stuff. When you’re young, you’re crazy to do that shit. When you’re old you’re crazy not to do it.”)

Visually the movie is great, bypassing the slick look currently popular and going with a more traditional filmstock. There’s a lot of interesting framing in the shots, and you can really see the golden mean at play in a lot of scenes. The highway shots are beautiful, combining the breathlessness of the American southwest with the mundane reality of roadtrips with your family. The score is also fantastic, with influences ranging from indie, folk, western, latin, and even French music.

The movie maintains an air of tension throughout, without being overbearing or annoying. When a scene is set up for a joke, you’re never quite sure if it’s going to end up being over-the-top or mundane, which is true for the whole movie. A lot of movies, you’re pretty much knowing the entire time that everything is going to turn out alright, but this movie really keeps you guessing how things will turn out. I’m not going to say too much, but I will say that the ending is basically the most awesome thing that could happen.

Overall, I’m going to go with 3 ¾ stars, definitely something to rent or Netflix.

Get the trailer here.

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