Yes, I’m a little late to this one, but I caught it on DVD before the Oscars Sunday night. Crammed with all the love and dysfunction you can pack into one yellow, clutch-deprived VW Van, Little Miss Sunshine is a laugh-out-loud comedy about family, adversity, and little girl beauty contests. Alan Arkin plays the American id as a porn-loving, drug-using, foul-mouthed grandpa. Steve Carell’s suicidal Proust expert who’s love interest has just chosen his nemesis over him is hysterical and appears to be the only sane person in the family. Toni Colette and Greg Kinnear are at their dependable best as a mother holding a family together and a father/motivational speaker who’s failing at both (ironically, because he actually believes his techniques). And not to be left out Paul Dano does a bang-up job as a wanna-be-fighter-pilot adolescent stuck in a family that isn’t nearly as bad as he believes, or at least not for the reasons he believes.
But it is Little Miss Sunshine, or rather Abigail Breslin’s Olive competing in that beauty competition, who brings heart to this movie. So much heart, in fact, that it’s easy to view this movie as only a deviant family comedy preaching the age-old principle of sticking together to overcome all obstacles. But to stop there is to miss the wicked skewering of a post-Jon Benet society that continues to dress up little girls as women and teach them to walk, talk, and dance like adults. That Olive takes this to it’s logical conclusion and goes into a strip tease of sorts on stage as her talent is one of the most courageous stances for true family values seen on screen in years. This movie isn’t endorsing its family. It’s pointing out that in a world this screwed-up, they’re trying to love each other and trying to “be there” for each other. Tragically, the family they show us mirrors their VW van, bright and shiny yellow on the outside, seriously messed-up on the inside, but trying to make it. Don’t stop at the family, though, check out the world shown us in their microcosm. A world that is a beauty contest pumping out sexualized kids and adults who aren’t quite sure why that would be wrong.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Little Miss Sunshine 8 (out of ten)
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5 comments:
I give it a B+. I liked a lot of it, but I resent movies that imply that you can eschew conservative family values and still have a positive family atmosphere. That ending was so contrived and ridiculous it ruined the whole thing. Arkin was genius though, and I love the scene where Carell sees his former lover and the new dominant Proust scholar.
yeah, but i think that's the point of the ending. to make you sick at your stomach and say "what's going on?" i agree it's contrived (no one watches her "talent" one time but her grandfather?), but, as i mention in my review, i think it's blasting this type of family as much as anything else. I'm sick to my stomach before she even takes the stage, all that makeup on little girls? but then she takes it to its logical conclusion. pure satire.
I am with you on the satirical nature of the dancing. But, the gay uncle, the sympathetic junkie grandpa, and the atheist son are all annoying to me....even though I enjoy their roles, I don't like that they are portrayed as neutrally or positively.
that's fair. it bothered me some as well, but i'm sure if i was a father at this point, it would bother me more.
Both of you liked it much more than me. The movie lost me when they took the corpse out of the hospital - an impossibility, even in a backwards Arizona desert town. I can definitely suspend belief for movies, but not when words like Proust and Nietzsche are being bandied about with a straight face.
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