“Little Miss Sunshine” (Fox Searchlight)
Don’t Be Fooled By the Title
“Little Miss Sunshine” is an R rated film about a totally dysfunctional family. It has some moments of hilarity but overall it is a movie that tries too hard to be quirky and ends up being bland. The acting is good but the situations aren’t. The film even borrows from that old Chevy Chase film, where they strapped the dead grandmother on the roof of the car so they could go see the Grand Canyon. In this film it is so they can get to a child beauty contest.
The family consists of the father, Richard (Greg Kinnear), the mother Sheryl (Toni Colette), the grandpa (Alan Arkin), the brother Frank (Steve Carell), the son Dwayne (Paul Dano) and the little sister Olive (Abigail Breslin). Richard is trying to sell his “9 steps program” and make a million. Grandpa is a heroin snorter and a pornography ogler. Frank is just coming off a suicide attempt. Dwayne is so fed up with his family that he refuses to speak. Olive wants to be “Little Miss Sunshine.” Sheryl is just trying to hold them all together.
When Olive finds out she has been upped to winner in a “Little Miss Sunshine” local contest, she begs her family to take her to Redondo Beach, California for the finals. This means a long trip from Albuquerque, New Mexico to California on a Volkswagen bus. But they all cram into it and off they go.
They have some troubling adventures along the way but ultimately end up in Redondo Beach where Olive competes. The scene of the tiny Jonbenet lookalikes parading around for the judges is one of the most amusing but also disquieting moments in the film. Such contests always seem to have sexual overtones but Olive takes it to a new level.
All of the actors are good and do their best to make their roles appealing, but somehow the subject matter and the circumstances they are in just don’t lend themselves to being enjoyable. You laugh at times but it is uncomfortable laughter.
The film is rated R for excessive profanity.
“Little Miss Sunshine” will probably appeal to a much younger audience than expected. Its quirky sense of humor and its disregard for any traditional values puts it in the “cult” category alongside “Napoleon Dynamite” and “Waiting.”
But for general audiences it will be too much of a not so good thing. The acting is to be admired but the story is just too bland to be entertaining.
I scored “Little Miss Sunshine” a dim 4 out of 10.
