TITLE: Little Miss Sunshine
DIRECTOR: Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris
WRITER: Michael Arndt
TAGLINE: "Where's Olive?"
CAST: Greg Kinnear, Steve Carell, Tonie Collette, Paul Dano, Abigail Breslin, Alan Arkin

Little Miss Sunshine. I've always wanted to watch this movie...for the laffs. With Steve Carrell and Toni Collette on the cast, it's bound to be dysfunctional. Also, at the time, it was being lauded in many indie film fests as a good movie. What I didn't know was what "good" really meant.

First off, the summary:

Beauty Queen-wannabe Olive Hoover finds out that she qualified for Little Miss Sunshine. The pageant is going to be held in California in two days and her family -- motivational speaker dad who's trying to sell a success book with little success, pro-honesty obsessive mom, depressed uncle recently released from the asylum, Nietzsche-reading teenager brother who's taken a vow of silence, and heroin-snorting foul-mouthed grandpa -- all realize that they have to drop all of their plans to accompany her and show their support. The entire family go on an impromptu 200- mile roadtrip, but with the yellow bus breaking down on them will they make it on time?

The movie is slice of life, which means that it's all just a series of one adventure after another with barely any plot to thread them all together. And nothing actually happens to the characters afterwards. We don't get to see the father finally get a break in his 9-step success book. We don't get to see the depressed brother become well again. In other words, there is no happy-ending. What we do get to see is a glimpse of what sort of people Olive's family is and how close they really are to each other.

I love that part where everyone pushes the bus in order to get it started and then quickly jump in before they get left behind. Symbolic. They all try so hard to make it work and it does work, just not in the smoothest way you'd expect.

But my favorite scene is probably the talent portion where everyone saw, for the first time, what Olive's heretofore unknown talent routine is. It's a very suggestive dance to the tune of "Super Freak" by Rick James and Olive dances it with such joy (even dedicating the routine to her grandfather who taught her the moves), completely unaware of the subtext behind it.

Everyone, the audience and the other contestants, were so offended that they start to get up and leave, and the pageant manager tries to get Olive's father to get off the stage. You can see it on Greg Kinnear's face how humiliating the entire thing was, not only for him but for his family, and how much he just wanted it to be over, but then instead of stopping Olive he humiliates himself further by joining in the dance.

I laughed so hard I cried. He'd do that to himself than destroy his daughter's self-esteem by making her stop.

Little Miss Sunshine is a beautiful film. I do not regret watching it. There are many more things that the film can teach you -- about double standards (the other contestants were offended by Olive's routine, unaware of the hypersexual looks they donned for the contest), about teen angst, etc. If you want to appreciate the movie, you have to like the slice of life genre and don't expect too much from it. Take everything as it comes.

THE SCORE

Story - 8
Sound - 6
Cinematography - 7
Picture - 6
Special Effects - 1
Acting - 8

Overall - 6/10

Labels: comedy, drama, humor, indie