A review of Little Miss Sunshine
Cute+ Weird = Entertaining. That sums up Little Miss Sunshine pretty succinctly. In their quest to ensure daughter Olive (Abigail Breslin) gets to the eagerly awaited beauty pageant for little girls on time, dad Richard (Greg Kinnear) and mom Sheryl (Toni Collette) pile the family, including brother Dwayne (Paul Dano), grandfather (Alan Arkin) and uncle Frank (Steve Carell) into their yellow van and drive from New Mexico to California as fast as they can.
Straightforward enough. Except that as each scene unfolds, you can’t help but gasp at the sheer craziness of it all, because this family is not your average American household. Dwayne has taken a vow of silence as a result of his worship for Nietzsche, Frank has attempted suicide because his gay lover, one of his students, rejected him, Grandpa is a drug-snorting expletive-spewer, Richard believes that winning is everything, and Sheryl is a chain-smoking loser.
Through his screenplay, Michael Arndt shows us exactly how messed up Americans can be - and succeeds phenomenally. He takes it to the other extreme, but he pulls it off because these characters are fascinating to watch. They are humorless to the point that they are funny. When Richard is pulled over by a cop for speeding, he goes into a panic. The audience is familiar with the quirks of each character by now and when he says ‘Oh my God, I'm getting pulled over. Everyone, just... pretend to be normal’, it’s almost a given that a laugh will escape your mouth. Normal, after all, is the last thing this family is.
As a commentary on American society today, the film makes us look deep inside ourselves. Richard is a motivational speaker, but he is so worried about losing one of his clients that his job is clearly meaningless. When Grandpa says ‘A real loser is someone who's so afraid of not winning he doesn't even try’, the hidden dig does not escape Richard’s attention, but it also makes us wonder about ourselves as individuals, what our hopes and dreams are and if we are actually as hypocritical as people as Richard clearly is.
Abigail Breslin as Olive is chubby, cute and innocent. At the beauty pageant, she clearly stands out among all the other made-up, dolled-up little girls who look and act more like they are twenty than ten years old, and your heart goes out to her. Paul Dano has given a performance that he will find difficult to better – there is so much anger in Dwayne but he gets the audience on his side in a heartbeat when we discover that his color blindness will prevent him from achieving his lifelong ambition of becoming a pilot. Steve Carell, Toni Collette, Greg Kinnear and Alan Arkin are very competent. With a screenplay that is designed for its characters, thought-provoking dialogue and entertaining performances, Little Miss Sunshine is a refreshing change from the romantic comedies, political dramas and action films that are more common fare. Highly recommended.
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