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Movie Review - Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
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(What this rating means)
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| Director: |
Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris |
| Starring: |
Steve Carell, Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, Abigail Breslin, and Paul Dano |
| Rated: |
R (for language, some sex and drug content) |
| Length: |
99 minutes |
| Genre: |
Dramedy |
| Tagline: |
Where's Olive? |
| Studio: |
Fox Searchlight |
| Website: |
Little Miss Sunshine |
| Release: |
August 18, 2006 (Memphis) |
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PLOT
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Welp, the studio sent me the press kit for a reason, so I'm gonna take advantage of it. Here's its plot summary.
Please note that I wouldn't have chosen to use the word "tragicomic." This is way easier than rewording
everything and passing off the summary as original...
No one among the Hoovers quite has it together, but it’s not for lack of trying. Father Richard (Kinnear), a
hopelessly optimistic motivational speaker, is desperately attempting to sell his 9-step program for success --
without much success. Meanwhile, the Hoovers’ "pro-honesty" mother Sheryl (Collette) is constantly harried by her
family’s eccentric secrets, especially those of her brother (Carell), a suicidal Proust scholar fresh out of the
hospital after being jilted by his gay lover. Then there are the younger Hoovers with their unlikely dreams - the
four-eyed, slightly plump, seven year-old would-be beauty queen Olive (Breslin) and Dwayne (Dano), an anger-fueled,
Nietzsche-reading teen who has taken a staunch vow of silence until he gets into the Air Force Academy. Topping
off the family is the grandfather (Alan Arkin), a foul-mouthed pleasure-seeker recently kicked out of his
retirement home for snorting heroin.
They might not be the picture of perfect mental health, but when a fluke gets Olive invited to compete in the
fiercely competitive Little Miss Sunshine competition in California, the whole Hoover family rallies behind her.
They pile into their rusted-out VW bus and head West on a three-day tragicomic journey filled with madcap surprises
and leading up to Olive’s big debut - which will change the entire misfit family in ways they could never imagine.
Dysfunctional family hijinks ensue.
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JOHNNY'S TAKE
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Little Miss Sunshine is a prime example of why I hate when comedies are overhyped coming out of pretentious
film festivals. Hearing people talk you'd think everybody was passing out while watching the movie due to the fact
that they were so immersed in the hilarity that oxygen was being replaced by laughter. And then we get the
commercials displaying a handful of plebes who were probably paid $5 to look into the camera and read a few lines
from a cue card about how great the movie was. You know what I'm talking about. Scripted comments such as...
"This movie was so great that I want to name my first child Little Miss Sunshine!"
"I laughed so hard during this movie that I died. Literally. Medics arrived on the scene, revived me, and then I
refused to go to the hospital because I didn't want to miss out on any of the non-stop hilarity!"
"This movie was so hysterical that it made me slap my girlfriend!"
That last line applies to Ike Turner only. But you get the picture - it generates so much hype that the movie
has a nearly impossible chance of living up to it. But is Little Miss Sunshine the comedy that is able
to live up to the buzz and the above-90% scores on Rottentomatoes and exceed all my expectations?
No. No it isn't.
Don't get me wrong; it is a fairly entertaining movie. It's quirky, it's different, it's dysfunctional - in other
words, it reminds me of my Uncle Larry. But it simply is not the laugh-out-loud-and-roll-down-the-aisles-while-punching-your-mama
guffaw-o-rama that everybody at Sundance claimed.
Overall, I enjoyed the film. I wasn't overly enthralled but I at least walked away content in feeling that my
time wasn't wasted. But I was really hoping for more big laughs. More memorable scenes. Dialogue that stuck
with me, that would be quotable. But everything clicked only occasionally.
I was really scared at first that this was going to be another Lost in Translation borefest. I guess
things started so slow for me mainly because I didn't find the profanity-spewing grandfather funny at all, and I was
really scared this was going nowhere except the bottom of the gutter, but thankfully grampa's role diminishes and
it's at that point where things pick up and I was happy to stick around for the rest of the ride.
I also think part of my problem is that I saw the movie at Studio on the Square. For those of you not well-versed
in Memphis movie theater history, it's a Midtown theater where all the movie snobs hang out. On any given night of
the week you can find guys wearing ascots and sipping wine. Real high-falutin'. And there's probably less than a
50/50 chance that they're straight. I see no less than 10 people I want to punch whenever I'm there.
This is obviously an artsy enough film that it fits their taste, and that really started to get annoying after
a while. For example, the moment they saw the son reading a Nietzsche book they just erupted in laughter. Whereas,
I made a face, looked around, and wondered if I missed some sort of joke. Seriously, what exactly is funny about
that? Ooooh, a teenager is reading Nietzsche! That's high-class irony of the funniest degree! I know that's what
they're thinking, and it made me want to try extra hard not to laugh. I'm fickle like that; deal with it.
Oh well, at least I now know that all I have to do is include a Tolstoy reference in my in-development screenplay,
and I'll be guaranteed a four-week run at "the Studio." That's something, I suppose.
The film really starts to hit its groove once the road trip starts - it's easily the highlight of the film,
particularly everything that goes wrong with the VW bus. And Olive's culminating dance routine at the pageant
represents the kind of off-kilter, free-form humor that I wish the rest of the movie embraced. The pageant girls
are so ridiculous-looking that you can't help but laugh at them, but if you sit down and think about it then you'll
realize how disturbing that whole scene is, especially in light of the resurfacing of the JonBenet Ramsey case.
If any good comes out of this movie then let's hope a parent or thousand will be scared away from entering their
children in such freak shows.
If you're the kind of person who digs the type of movie whose fanbase refers to it a "thinking man's comedy" then
you might enjoy this more than I did. Even though I'm not really sure what there is to think about. It's about a
dysfunctional family who goes on a road trip and faces a few shenanigans. But that won't stop people from finding
things in the movie that I'd never care to think of.
For example, I heard a couple of turtleneck-wearers discussing how ingenious the camera work was. Initially the
camera shows the family pushing the VW bus from the outside, but at the end we see the camera on the inside,
capturing them through the window. The distinguished duo was discussing how this camera angle was an emphasis
of how the audience has now discovered who the family is and we're looking at them from within.
Blah blah blah. I have no clue if that's what the filmmakers were going for. I highly doubt it and I highly don't
care. That's the kind of psychobabble that I don't look for in my comedies. But hey, if that's the sort of thing
that tickles your Birkenstocks then by all means, gather all your pencil-thin goatee friends together afterwards
and sip coffee out of champagne glasses while discussing such irrelevant idiosyncrasies.
As for me, I'm content to laugh at the malfunctioning VW bus horn and the whiter-than-Michael Jackson dance stylings
of Greg Kinnear in his khaki shorts.
This certainly isn't for everybody, but it's definitely for somebody, and those bodies that are dying to see it will
most likely find this is the something they were hoping for. If none of that makes sense to you then just play
it safe and save it for a rental.
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ODDS & ENDS
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- Kinnear's character's 9-step program is called "Refuse to Lose." Is he ripping off Memphis Tigers' basketball
coach John Calipari? I understand that only those of you in Memphis will get this joke, and you might not even
appreciate it all that much, but there you go. I had to throw it out there.
- It took five years before the film was finally made because studios were too reluctant to take a risk on a
"family movie" with such dark tones.
- Fourteen directors were considered.
- Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris are a husband/wife directing team, and this is their feature film
debut.
- To prepare for his silent role, Paul Dano spent a few days undergoing his own self-imposed vow of
silence.
- Abigail Breslin wears a child-sized fat-suit to portray Olive's rotundness.
- I know you'll be trying to remember where you've seen Breslin so let me help you out - she was Mel Gibson's
daughter in Signs.
- The production of the movie was limited to 30 days and was filmed across various southern California locations
and Arizonan deserts.
- For the film’s climactic pageant scene, real participants from the world of children’s beauty contests were
cast. "We went to great lengths to get real pageant kids and their parents for those scenes," says Valerie Faris.
"We didn’t dress up or direct these little girls hardly at all." That is a very scary thought.
- Steve Carell was in Melinda and Melinda with Josh Brolin who was in Hollow Man with Kevin Bacon.
- Alternately, Toni Collette is in the upcoming The Dead Girl with Josh Brolin who was in Hollow
Man with Kevin Bacon.
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MAMA'S APPROVAL
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This one definitely ain't for mama or the kiddies. The language is pretty rough at times, especially when the
grandfather is dropping f-bombs and carrying on sexually-explicit discussions. There is also a scene featuring
dirty magazines that the chil'ren definitely don't need to see.
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TRAILER COMPARISON
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I have no problem admitting that I laughed only once (maybe twice) when I first watched the trailer. I was shocked
because I'd heard all the buzz coming out of Sundance. I thought for sure this was going to be another Lost in
Translation - critics loved that movie but it bored me silly. Though I don't feel Little Miss Sunshine
is as good as everybody is saying, I do think it's much better than the trailer portrayed.
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THE GIST
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Little Miss Sunshine isn't as good as "they" say it is, but it's still a fairly entertaining film. If you're
on the fence about it then I'd definitely suggest waiting to make it a rental. It's not for everybody, and it's
not worth $8+ a pop just to find out if it's for you.
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