Little Miss Sunshine
LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE REVIEW:
Amidst all of the overhyped blockbusters of this summer, I am pretty sure that this weekend I saw one of the few truly "great" movies of the last few months. In fact, Little Miss Sunshine is maybe the first movie since United 93 where I really was thinking "Oscar" after I saw the film.
What is Little Miss Sunshine? It's not exactly easy to describe, but to use Hollywood's favorite method of tagging a movie, I'd say this: take the basic family road-trip premise behind National Lampoon's Vacation, add in the family drama and angst of Ordinary People, and mix with a little of the dark comedy of The Royal Tannenbaums and a dash of the earnest quirkiness of Napoleon Dynamite. That is Little Miss Sunshine in a nutshell, but it really is its own unique thing - the tone of the movie is heartfelt, affectionate, even sentimental at times ... yet it definitely has a little bit of a darker, adult edge.
What I loved about this movie though is how its different scenes really took you through the gamut of emotions that a family trip like this might have. There are the moments where you can't stand everyone else - are you really even related to these people? There's the moments where you fight even though you know it's pointless. There's the arguments about little things that quickly escalate into family State of the Unions. And then there's these weird moments of triumph, where some external factor puts everyone on the same wavelength, and the family really does function as a unit in the way that only a family can.
Little Miss Sunshine just kind of captured this whole feeling of looking around at your family members and wondering who these people are. Take Alan Arkin as the outspoken granfather figure in the movie. To his young grandaughter he's a hero, a mentor, a silly cheerleader of her burgeoning beauty pageant career. But to almost everyone else he's a vice-riddled, vulgar, problematic character - he really is kind of an odd, sketchy guy. But to Olive, his eight year old granddaughter, he's just Grandpa, with all the unconditional love that that title entails.
The movie really is, as you can see, a fantastic character study, and that's in no small part due to the absolutely phenomenal cast, each of whom turns in a performance for the ages.
As I said, Alan Arkin is the scene-stealer here. What I didn't mention before is that he's freaking hilarious in this movie. I won't spoil the jokes but some of the very un-grandfatherly advice that he gives his teenaged grandson concerning women is just off-the-charts hilarious. Arkin's distinct voice is put to full comedic effect. When he utters things like "Chicken? Again with the chicken?" he makes it funny in a a way that only he can. Basically, this is one of the best actors around putting in perhaps one of his best and most memorable performances ever.
Steve Carell really showed me something here. Carell takes his deadpan comedy skills and puts them to use in a whole new way. While this is the same droopy-eyed Carell you know and love, it is a character far-removed from anything he's played before - a much darker character, and yet one who's really the heart and soul of the movie. Just as in the 40-Year Old Virgin, you find yourself rooting for Carell here, even though he plays a depressed, suicidal, gay Proust scholar - not exactly the recipe for a lovable character, but Carell somehow makes it all work.
Greg Kinnear may have the most underrated role in the movie. He takes the classic embattled Chevy Chase character from Vacation and puts a darker, more desperate spin on it. The irony that he's a motivational speaker whose family is in shambles only adds to the depth of his character - great work here by Kinnear.
The rest of the cast is universally talented. Toni Collette does a great job as the broken-down mother, desperately clinging to a sense of familial unity. The scene in the beginning where she spreads out fast-food chicken, a salad, and Sprite at the dinner table is perfectly symbolic of her character - grasping at straws to preserve a semblance of normality. Paul Dano as the brooding teenaged son who has taken a vow of silence is another great performance. Dano and Steve Carell have a great chemistry in their scenes together, and it's yet another performance that mixes laughter, sadness, comedy, and tragedy, to great dramatic effect.
And lastly, special mention has to be made of Abigail Breslyn, who has got to be one of the most talented child actors around. She is effortlessly real and believable as a little girl who dreams of being a pageant queen, and is funny, poignant, and just really, really good here. Just like her character in a movie, she never really felt like an actress playing a part - just a real, ordinary kid.
Abigail's character of Olive is the stimulis for the story, and through her the movie becomes more than just a family-based character study, but a social satire, a look at the pursuit of fame and of living out a dream when it's all you have left.
This movie is loaded with great little cameos and tons of funny bit characters. But with a lot of these quirkier indie comedies, you get a few funny lines, and a lot of self-aware cleverness, but rarely does a dark comedy in this vein make you laugh out loud continuously throughout an entire scene. Not this one. While Little Miss Sunshine is by no means a comedy in the vein of the latest Will Ferell movie or whatever, it is not just a clever arthouse film either. The last ten minutes or so of this movie had me, and the entire theater audience, laughing so hard we were in tears - and man, the climactic moment of this film is just one of those all-time great film moments, where it's so funny you're laughing out loud like crazy, but it's such a great, happy moment that it becomes so much more than just pure comedy. I won't say any more, just that as much as this is a "dark" comedy, it really is also an uplifiting, enlightening, life-affirming one. Suffice to say, this one is a crowd-pleaser, an applause-getter. And overall, I'd call it one of my favorite movies so far this year.
My Grade: A
Amidst all of the overhyped blockbusters of this summer, I am pretty sure that this weekend I saw one of the few truly "great" movies of the last few months. In fact, Little Miss Sunshine is maybe the first movie since United 93 where I really was thinking "Oscar" after I saw the film.
What is Little Miss Sunshine? It's not exactly easy to describe, but to use Hollywood's favorite method of tagging a movie, I'd say this: take the basic family road-trip premise behind National Lampoon's Vacation, add in the family drama and angst of Ordinary People, and mix with a little of the dark comedy of The Royal Tannenbaums and a dash of the earnest quirkiness of Napoleon Dynamite. That is Little Miss Sunshine in a nutshell, but it really is its own unique thing - the tone of the movie is heartfelt, affectionate, even sentimental at times ... yet it definitely has a little bit of a darker, adult edge.
What I loved about this movie though is how its different scenes really took you through the gamut of emotions that a family trip like this might have. There are the moments where you can't stand everyone else - are you really even related to these people? There's the moments where you fight even though you know it's pointless. There's the arguments about little things that quickly escalate into family State of the Unions. And then there's these weird moments of triumph, where some external factor puts everyone on the same wavelength, and the family really does function as a unit in the way that only a family can.
Little Miss Sunshine just kind of captured this whole feeling of looking around at your family members and wondering who these people are. Take Alan Arkin as the outspoken granfather figure in the movie. To his young grandaughter he's a hero, a mentor, a silly cheerleader of her burgeoning beauty pageant career. But to almost everyone else he's a vice-riddled, vulgar, problematic character - he really is kind of an odd, sketchy guy. But to Olive, his eight year old granddaughter, he's just Grandpa, with all the unconditional love that that title entails.
The movie really is, as you can see, a fantastic character study, and that's in no small part due to the absolutely phenomenal cast, each of whom turns in a performance for the ages.
As I said, Alan Arkin is the scene-stealer here. What I didn't mention before is that he's freaking hilarious in this movie. I won't spoil the jokes but some of the very un-grandfatherly advice that he gives his teenaged grandson concerning women is just off-the-charts hilarious. Arkin's distinct voice is put to full comedic effect. When he utters things like "Chicken? Again with the chicken?" he makes it funny in a a way that only he can. Basically, this is one of the best actors around putting in perhaps one of his best and most memorable performances ever.
Steve Carell really showed me something here. Carell takes his deadpan comedy skills and puts them to use in a whole new way. While this is the same droopy-eyed Carell you know and love, it is a character far-removed from anything he's played before - a much darker character, and yet one who's really the heart and soul of the movie. Just as in the 40-Year Old Virgin, you find yourself rooting for Carell here, even though he plays a depressed, suicidal, gay Proust scholar - not exactly the recipe for a lovable character, but Carell somehow makes it all work.
Greg Kinnear may have the most underrated role in the movie. He takes the classic embattled Chevy Chase character from Vacation and puts a darker, more desperate spin on it. The irony that he's a motivational speaker whose family is in shambles only adds to the depth of his character - great work here by Kinnear.
The rest of the cast is universally talented. Toni Collette does a great job as the broken-down mother, desperately clinging to a sense of familial unity. The scene in the beginning where she spreads out fast-food chicken, a salad, and Sprite at the dinner table is perfectly symbolic of her character - grasping at straws to preserve a semblance of normality. Paul Dano as the brooding teenaged son who has taken a vow of silence is another great performance. Dano and Steve Carell have a great chemistry in their scenes together, and it's yet another performance that mixes laughter, sadness, comedy, and tragedy, to great dramatic effect.
And lastly, special mention has to be made of Abigail Breslyn, who has got to be one of the most talented child actors around. She is effortlessly real and believable as a little girl who dreams of being a pageant queen, and is funny, poignant, and just really, really good here. Just like her character in a movie, she never really felt like an actress playing a part - just a real, ordinary kid.
Abigail's character of Olive is the stimulis for the story, and through her the movie becomes more than just a family-based character study, but a social satire, a look at the pursuit of fame and of living out a dream when it's all you have left.
This movie is loaded with great little cameos and tons of funny bit characters. But with a lot of these quirkier indie comedies, you get a few funny lines, and a lot of self-aware cleverness, but rarely does a dark comedy in this vein make you laugh out loud continuously throughout an entire scene. Not this one. While Little Miss Sunshine is by no means a comedy in the vein of the latest Will Ferell movie or whatever, it is not just a clever arthouse film either. The last ten minutes or so of this movie had me, and the entire theater audience, laughing so hard we were in tears - and man, the climactic moment of this film is just one of those all-time great film moments, where it's so funny you're laughing out loud like crazy, but it's such a great, happy moment that it becomes so much more than just pure comedy. I won't say any more, just that as much as this is a "dark" comedy, it really is also an uplifiting, enlightening, life-affirming one. Suffice to say, this one is a crowd-pleaser, an applause-getter. And overall, I'd call it one of my favorite movies so far this year.
My Grade: A
posted by Danny B at 12:18 AM
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