Little Miss Sunshine

Little Miss Sunshine (2006)

HBO On Demand, Seattle, WA

January 09, 2008

**** / ****

by Scott Muoio

Give me a movie about realistic family social dynamics, strange yet familiar characters, the pursuit of dreams gone awry, and throw in a road trip as the cherry on top and I’ll write you a positive review. That, in a nutshell, is Little Miss Sunshine, the story of one family’s individual dreams coming to a head on a road trip to a children’s beauty pageant. Rather typical on the one hand, with family bickering, stunted dreams, and the requisite search for meaning, both literally in a classic Volkswagon bus and figuratively in a 700 mile symbolic trek doomed to fail, Little Miss Sunshine is perfect on the other. Gathering a talented cast to pepper the emblematic story with subtle wit and endless fun, the film transforms from typical plot into revelatory glee before you can say, “Where’s Olive?” And with a climactic ending that actually exceeds expectation, what more could a moviegoer ask for?

Little Miss Sunshine tells the story of a young girl, Olive (Abigail Breslin) who dreams of being a beauty pageant champion. She studies old pageants on television, carefully mimicking the movements of stunned glee displayed by past winners. Her grandpa (Alan Arkin), who was recently booted from his retiree home for promiscuous activity and snorting heroin, believes in his granddaughter even though her portly belly might seem contrary to typical pageant protocol. Grandpa is more than happy to be her private dance coach as the duo attempt to perfect her “talent” for that particular portion of the pageant. Richard (Greg Kinnear) is the patriarch of the Hoovers, an extremely unsuccessful motivational speaker whose obsession with winning seems to stem from the fact that he has never won anything himself. His words, while almost always positive, belie a series of failures we can easily imagine even if the movie hardly shows a one. One look at his dorky shorts and cell phone belt clip and the truth screams loud and clear: maybe next year.

Sheryl (Toni Collette) is the matriarch of the Hoover clan. Her dream is to protect her family and keep them chugging along toward something other than total meltdown. It is a tough task, indeed, but watch how Sheryl smiles when her husband bickers with her brother over some meaningless nonsense and it becomes apparent that Sheryl’s love and compassion are the glue keeping this family from falling over the edge. He who is closest to the edge, Sheryl’s brother Frank (Steve Carell), is “the number one Proust scholar” who lost his university position because he fell in love with a student who subsequently dumped him for “the number two Proust scholar.” Quite unfortunate, really, and combined with the number two Proust scholar’s recent Proust best seller, enough to leave Frank suicidal. Not quite suicidal, himself, but in the process of maintaining a vow of silence inspired by the German philosopher Nietzsche, is Dwayne (Paul Dano). Dwayne is Olive’s brother and hates “everyone.” His big dream is to become an air force pilot and, I imagine, fly far, far away from the Hoover household in New Mexico.

Following a dinner table scene that establishes all that I’ve written above, the six family members jump into the family’s yellow bus and high tail it 700 miles from New Mexico to Redondo Beach, California for The Little Miss Sunshine Pageant. Along the way we are treated to the family’s slapstick antics, the usual tragically funny road trip stops and detours, and a handful of clever allusions to the meaning of The American Dream, family values, and individuality. The best aspect of Little Miss Sunshine, beyond its excellent balance of comedy, drama, and insight, is the film’s positivity in the face of all the disaster, heartbreak, and let downs that it chronicles. A film like this could have gone several different ways but in choosing the kooky, funny, introspective path, and allowing the extremely talented cast to use their subtleness to make large statements, directors Jonathan Dayton and Valeria Faris have crafted a wonderfully giddy film. The magic is in the details, as the old saying goes, and the details in Sunshine are indeed quite magical.

Not the most innovative, original, or greatest film you will ever see, Little Miss Sunshine is nonetheless great fun with a heart and a brain. And any film with those credentials is, at least in my book, quite special.