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Movie Review:
Little Miss Sunshine, Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, and Steve Carell
LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE
Directed by: Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris
Writers: Michael Arndt
Cast: Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, Steve Carell, Alan Arkin, Paul Dano, Abigail Breslin
Distributor: Fox Searchlight Pictures
Runtime: 101 minutes
In a summer of big budgets, big names, and big hype, Little Miss Sunshine just doesn’t measure up. If movies like Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest or Miami Vice were Big Mac super-sized combos with apple pie for dessert, then Little Miss Sunshine might be something like a plain salad with dressing on the side. But just like food, sometimes you have to weed out the bad stuff and ingest something that’s good for you, as simple and plain as it may be.
That’s where this little film comes into place. Made on a budget that’s almost next-to-nothing by Hollywood standards, and helmed by a husband-and-wife directing duo whose previous resume works include commercials and music videos for The Smashing Pumpkins, Weezer, and Macy Gray, Little Miss Sunshine is as simple as they get. In fact, most of the film is shot in bare minimum locations and with little gloss outside of the lipstick on the Little Miss Sunshine Beauty Pageant contestants. With all the usual Hollywood elements gone, the film has to rely on the strength of its script and its actors’ performances. In both respects, Little Miss Sunshine excels beyond expectations.
When films like John Tucker Must Die and Little Man are green lighted on a daily basis in Tinseltown, it’s a wonder why Little Miss Sunshine took almost five years to complete. After struggling with budget constraints, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris finally completed their first film and shopped it around the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, the Mecca for ambitious directors with unique visions. Fox Searchlight bit for an impressive $10.5 million in distribution right costs.
At first glance, the dysfunctional family on whom the film centers around appears to be fleshed out from a Film Making 101 textbook. Dad Richard (Greg Kinnear) is a third-rate motivational speaker who is banking on a book deal, based on his “Refuse to Lose” system, to solve the family’s financial and emotional problems. He sprouts off asinine and empty clichés gleaned from his teachings when talking to people, which probably tells us that he’s not very good at connecting with his family. Sheryl (Toni Collette), the matriarch of the family, worries about her suicidal brother Frank (Steve Carell), a gay Proust scholar who tries to take his life after a failed romance. Grandpa (Alan Arkin) is an opinionated, rickety old man who snorts heroin in the bathroom, so it’s a given that he’s going to be providing the comedic relief. Dwayne (Paul Dano) is the eternally suffering teenaged son who worships Nietzsche and has taken a vow of silence until he fulfills his life’s goal of enrolling in the Air Force Academy. Little Olive (Abigail Breslin) is heartbreakingly earnest in her dream of competing in beauty pageants, and is the driving force behind the family’s decision to drive from Albuquerque to the Little Miss Sunshine Pageant in California. The characters, which have predetermined quirks and character flaws, are almost two-dimensional on paper, but come alive on the big screen.
The film opens shortly after Frank’s suicide attempt, when Sheryl decides to takes him back to her house to look after him. A fairly long dinner scene follows, and through a series of sharp and honest dialogue, the characters in this ensemble piece start coming alive. We find out that Sheryl and Richard seem to fight constantly about their lack of money; that Grandpa’s only soft spot is Olive as he helps her with her beauty pageant training; that Frank is bleakly sarcastic yet vulnerable; and that Dwayne, true to his emo roots, hates everybody.
Through a series of convenient contrivances, the family boards their ancient VW bus (the set of many amusing sight gags) and sets off for the pageant. As expected, hilarity, anguish, sadness, and family bonding ensue. But unlike other films about problematic families that embark on relationship-changing road trips, you start to actually care about these people and Olive’s pageant – their dreams become our dreams, their worries become our worries, and their heartbreaks become our heartbreaks. The easiest way to explain this is look at Michael Arndt’s script. In an hour and a half, he has managed to inject more character development than the three X-Men film combined. When looking at mainstream films as merely entertainment to escape the everyday world, it’s almost jarring to see how real each character is sketched.
Despite the overall brilliance of the script, various plot points seem awkward or out of place. For instance, a revelation by Dwayne late in the film is perplexing, to say the least, and feels like a throwaway scene to further Dwayne’s screen time and develop his persona beyond the “angry, emo teenager” that endeared him to us in the first place. Similarly, much is left to our imaginations as to how Richard and Olive’s relationship could develop. Outside of a few tempting scenes that falsely point to a tantalizing climax of some sort, most of it is simply swept under the rug by the second act.
The actor who truly shines in this ensemble piece is ten-year-old Breslin, who has previously starred alongside Mel Gibson in Signs (2002) and Kate Hudson in Raising Helen (2004). She plays the right balance of precocious, sincere, and hopeful without reverting to a polished version of Hollywood “child.” Plus, she actually looks and acts her age, which is a nice regression to realism. Carell also steals most of the scenes that he appears in, and can go from inadvertently funny to excruciatingly poignant in one breath. Collette, Arkin and Dano also do amiable jobs, but Kinnear seems to be phoning it in for most of his scenes. In some respects, this works because understated is much more agreeable than scenery chewing, which he could have easily fallen back on.
By the third act, the dynamic of the film shifts to the Little Miss Sunshine contest. It’s obvious that the film wants us to explore the issues involved with beauty pageants and how they relate to the lost innocence of children, but thankfully, the film relies on its unpretentious script to let us draw our own conclusions instead of beating us over the head with lessons to be learned.
As flawed as the family presented in Little Miss Sunshine is, the film is never apologetic about it. There are no big revelations set to an alt-rock soundtrack, no big speeches, and no true happy endings. And yet, the film manages to come together in one grand finale that is both humorous and symbolic. The film achieves what most can’t do – it forces us to take a look at our own imperfections, and turn them into something beautiful. ¤ C.Ho.
LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE:
(out of 5)