Little Miss Sunshine
Dir: Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris
Starring: Greg Kinnear, Steve Carrell, Toni Collette, Paul Dano, Abigail Breslin, Alan Arkin
Rated: 15
Hollywood, and its movies, has always been about the American Dream; the freedom to do and be what you want. Come the Sixties and Seventies and the new generation realised that the dream was going bad and set off to look for America and for themselves. First in literature with Kerouac and Thompson, then with films like EASY RIDER came the start of the road movies (not to be confused the Crosby and Hope films). As the youth were off in search of the truth and a new dream they found that family units were breaking down or were simply becoming dysfunctional, and creating a new sub-genre to be explored in writing and film, whether as drama or comedy. LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE takes all these elements and rolls them up into a funny, dysfunctional family, road movie about the American Dream.
Douglas Coupland wrote a book called All Families are Psychotic and the Hoover family of this film certainly fit into that category. From the heroin-snorting, foul-mouthed grandfather, brilliantly portrayed by Alan Arkin, to his eternally optimistic son Richard, the motivational speaker (Greg Kinnear) to Richard's own son Dwayne, a typical sullen, angry teenager who reads Nietzsche and has taken a vow of silence until he achieves his goal of getting into the Air Force. Richard's wife Sheryl (Toni Collete) tries to keep the family together with her open, honesty policy, whilst trying to hide the fact that her Proust-scholar brother (Steve Carell) tried to commit suicide after being rejected by his gay lover. Perhaps the only bit of sanity is the youngest of the family, Olive, a plump, spectacle-wearing girl with dreams of becoming a beauty queen. It is her dream that is the driving force behind the movie.
After winning, by default, the local round of a pre-pubescent beauty competition, the titular Little Miss Sunshine, Olive has to go to California, from Albuquerque, but financial and familial situations dictate that the whole family have to go together in their car, a tired, old VW Kombi bus, which becomes as much a star of the show as the actors. As they try to race the clock to arrive on time for the pageant, whatever could possibly go wrong does, to create a great, almost farcical, comedy tinged with moments of powerful emotion.
There have been a string of disastrous family, road movie comedies recently (ARE WE THERE YET, R.V.), but LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE absolves those sins by being smart and funny. Although it is a movie about a family it is by no means a family movie (it has a 15 certificate). And it has a particularly disturbing ending in that it shows to what a low level American society has sunk to with the junior beauty pageants. Luckily Olive's routine restores some balance.
Just the film to renew your faith in humanity, with lots of laughs to boot.
LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE is on general release from September 8.
Starring: Greg Kinnear, Steve Carrell, Toni Collette, Paul Dano, Abigail Breslin, Alan Arkin
Rated: 15
Hollywood, and its movies, has always been about the American Dream; the freedom to do and be what you want. Come the Sixties and Seventies and the new generation realised that the dream was going bad and set off to look for America and for themselves. First in literature with Kerouac and Thompson, then with films like EASY RIDER came the start of the road movies (not to be confused the Crosby and Hope films). As the youth were off in search of the truth and a new dream they found that family units were breaking down or were simply becoming dysfunctional, and creating a new sub-genre to be explored in writing and film, whether as drama or comedy. LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE takes all these elements and rolls them up into a funny, dysfunctional family, road movie about the American Dream.
Douglas Coupland wrote a book called All Families are Psychotic and the Hoover family of this film certainly fit into that category. From the heroin-snorting, foul-mouthed grandfather, brilliantly portrayed by Alan Arkin, to his eternally optimistic son Richard, the motivational speaker (Greg Kinnear) to Richard's own son Dwayne, a typical sullen, angry teenager who reads Nietzsche and has taken a vow of silence until he achieves his goal of getting into the Air Force. Richard's wife Sheryl (Toni Collete) tries to keep the family together with her open, honesty policy, whilst trying to hide the fact that her Proust-scholar brother (Steve Carell) tried to commit suicide after being rejected by his gay lover. Perhaps the only bit of sanity is the youngest of the family, Olive, a plump, spectacle-wearing girl with dreams of becoming a beauty queen. It is her dream that is the driving force behind the movie.
After winning, by default, the local round of a pre-pubescent beauty competition, the titular Little Miss Sunshine, Olive has to go to California, from Albuquerque, but financial and familial situations dictate that the whole family have to go together in their car, a tired, old VW Kombi bus, which becomes as much a star of the show as the actors. As they try to race the clock to arrive on time for the pageant, whatever could possibly go wrong does, to create a great, almost farcical, comedy tinged with moments of powerful emotion.
There have been a string of disastrous family, road movie comedies recently (ARE WE THERE YET, R.V.), but LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE absolves those sins by being smart and funny. Although it is a movie about a family it is by no means a family movie (it has a 15 certificate). And it has a particularly disturbing ending in that it shows to what a low level American society has sunk to with the junior beauty pageants. Luckily Olive's routine restores some balance.
Just the film to renew your faith in humanity, with lots of laughs to boot.
LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE is on general release from September 8.
posted by Chris Patmore at 1:08 PM
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