Movie Maven

Little Miss Sunshine
Starring: Greg Kinnear, Steve Carell, Toni Collette
Written by: Michael Arndt
Directed by: Jonathon Dayton and Valerie Faris
Official Website

Photo courtesy of cinema.com

I love this movie.

In fact, I heart it.

There's just no other way to say it.

Saying that you "heart" something is far more powerful than just saying you like it. In an obnoxious, adolescent way it's how one expresses deep abiding love and affection. You can feel it deep down in your chest, an intense relatablility and intimacy. Imagine your first crush, and writing over and over on a piece of paper I (heart) so-and-so. That giggly schoolyard infatuation.

That's the kind of love I feel for Little Miss Sunshine.

A favorite of the Sundance Film Festival, it tells the story of a highly dysfunctional family determined to get Olive, their young daughter, into the finals of the Little Miss Sunshine pageant in California. Included are father Richard (Greg Kinnear) a struggling motivational speaker, his long-suffering wife Sheryl (Toni Collette) their Nietzsche-obsessed teenaged son Dwayne (Paul Dano,) Sheryl's gay, suicidal brother Frank (Steve Carell) and Richard's heroin-addicted father (a sublime Alan Arkin.)

It's funny and strange, charming and absorbing, and sweet without being saccharine. Every moment, every shot of the film is captured perfectly. The cast is phenomenal, every last one of them. They play off of each other with impeccable timing, no one actor overshadowing the others. Indeed from Carell's inspired portrayal of Frank, the gay, suicidal Proust scholar, to twelve-year-old Abigail Breslin's wonderfully natural presence as Olive, everyone seems to be operating at their very best. It's the kind of smooth, unpretentious acting that's rarely seen anymore.

The acting and superb direction is matched by a wonderful script, with both fantastic one-liners and enchanting banter between the family members. But it's also refreshingly honest. Olive asks Frank if he likes boys and not girls. When Frank says yes, she simply says, "That's silly." No illuminating insights, no "wise beyond her years." She thinks the idea is silly and she says so.

Like a real kid would.

I wish I could speak more about the "dark humor" but I don't want to risk giving anything away. Needless to say, you'll be shocked and delighted and all that. But the interesting bit is that it's tinged with real sadness. Darkly funny things don't just happen in Little Miss Sunshine just to be shocking or edgy or whatever. They want us to feel that sadness. But they want us to laugh too.

The plot may be twisted and darkly humorous, but at the end of the day it's really a little film about the bonds of family. A group of people who've found refuge from the world with each other. The most iconic image, of course, are the members of the family pushing their yellow VW bus, which has broken down and will only run after getting a head start, and then jumping into the van after it gets going. It's hilarious, of course, watching them run after the ludicrous vehicle, especially Carell, who does the best funny sprint since Tom Cruise in, well, in every movie Tom Cruise has had to run in. But the inherent sweetness of it also comes through- they are a bunch of misfits, pushing their slightly shoddy lives up the road together, and then jumping in as a group to whatever end befalls them.

I am a girl with broad tastes in film, and there are many films, in many different genres and levels of talent that I can honestly say I liked. What can I say? I'm a flirt.

But there are very few that I heart. And I heart this movie. I'm infatuated. So go see it. I can guarantee you'll be crushing too.