Little Miss Sunshine

[mouton]

LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE
Written by Michael Arndt
Directed by Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris


LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE is this year’s Sundance breakout and nearly all the press its received thus far has lauded it as, well, a little ray of sunshine to carry audiences through the last month of summer. It is the independent underdog that will tickle your funny bone, stimulate your mind and warm your heart. This little movie has so much to live up to and it has barely even gone wide at the moment I am writing this. LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE isn’t generating its own buzz; it’s having its buzz generated by the machine that wants so badly for it to be that movie it could. Y’know which one I’m talking about. The smaller, simpler movie that allows a more mature audience to wind down their summer, to let the ringing in their ears from all the explosive blockbusters subside. What the machine doesn’t understand is that the movie that fills that particular void is not manufactured. It is genuine and it earns that honour all by itself.

This honour is not one I feel LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE would have earned if it weren’t manufactured for it. Albeit an endearing film with authentic moments of hilarity and sentiment, it is often disconnected and unresolved. The dual director team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris create a believable family unit by giving each member their own personal touch. Dad is a failed motivational speaker; Mom has to deal with loser dad; Grandpa has a heroine problem; older brother has taken a vow of silence until he becomes a fighter pilot; and gay uncle Frank is fresh out of the hospital after trying to kill himself. Dealing themselves such a diverse hand of characters leaves many opportunities to cross the line between quirky and just plain awkward, which they do more often then they should. Then of course there’s Little Miss Sunshine wannabe herself, Olive. With an earnest enthusiasm and innocence beaming from her face (like a ray of … sorry), untouched and uncorrupted Olive reminds the family that they are in fact a family. It’s a lovely story but it is one that only takes shape in the final moments of the film. Prior to that, each character’s individual problems guide all of their own motivations and they only barely have any depth past these problems. Shifting each characters’ focus outwards gives the film some much needed structure but it leaves many an issue either unresolved or resolved far too quickly.

The ensemble cast of LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE reigns as the true heart of this organism. Cramped together in their yellow mini-bus, many different personalities fester. Greg Kinnear and Toni Collette are the heads of the family. Collette is merely a device to highlight the failures of her husband through her aggravation with him. Kinnear’s role however is hefty and he stridently carries that weight as an emasculated patriarch who preaches his failed life lessons to his daughter because she is the only one still buying them. Like another successful family piece, Noah Baumbach’s THE SQUID AND THE WHALE, the influence of the parents on the children manifests before your eyes in a difficult and painful fashion. Steve Carrell plays suicidal uncle, Frank, like a seemingly dormant volcano that may or may not erupt. You just can’t tell. His mystery is heartening and shows promise for his developing capabilities.

As a critic, shedding expectations is a higher state of being I try to achieve before I watch anything. I don’t read other reviews before I see the movie or even before I sit down to write my own, all as an effort to keep it real (dawg). It only takes a quick glance at a magazine cover to get whether people are hating, liking or really loving a movie so it is hard to avoid entirely. But as much as I try to approach each film with a fresh piece of paper to write on, buzz manages to influence the way we see things. When I’m told that something is really solid and it isn’t, even just a little, my disappointment is magnified. LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE has so many things going for it that what it is lacking makes it all the more frustrating because you really want it to live up to the hype.

[oscar jubis]

Originally posted by mouton
LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE isn’t generating its own buzz; it’s having its buzz generated by the machine that wants so badly for it to be that movie it could.

Since you wrote this, the film has climbed all the way to third in this week's box office, with a very healthy per theatre take. Its box office receipts have already more than tripled its production budget. Moreover, IMdb users have given the film the highest rating of any 2006 release. While it's a fact that Fox Searchlight has spent on marketing Little Miss Sunshine, the film is generating its own buzz. I grant you that this may not have been evident at the time you posted your review.

Albeit an endearing film with authentic moments of hilarity and sentiment, it is often disconnected and unresolved.

How and when is it "disconnected" and what is it that's left "unresolved"? It's impossible to agree or disagree with you when you fail to illustrate or to provide examples.

Shifting each characters’ focus outwards gives the film some much needed structure but it leaves many an issue either unresolved or resolved far too quickly.

At least one example of an issue left unresolved and why that is detrimental to the film, and at least one example of an issue that's "resolved far too quickly" would be helpful.

Kinnear’s role however is hefty and he stridently carries that weight as an emasculated patriarch who preaches his failed life lessons to his daughter because she is the only one still buying them.

Good observation.

[mouton]

Oscar.

I don't get into specifics or examples because I anticipate more a readership that has not seen the film. As most unresolved issues tend to fall at the end of the film, I don't like to discuss them. If I had to give examples, I would bring up the marital conflicts or the Steve Carrell character's depression. I didn't feel either was addressed with any seriousness so the points became trivial. When I refer to issues being resolved too quickly, I am thinking of the older brother's full breakdown over not being able to pursue his dreams. It is intensely sad upon his realization and his reaction is dramatic and hurtful ... but because the pageant is starting shortly, he has to get over it. It felt rushed and forced.

As for the buzz the film has generated in its progression towards box office success, my argument is that the machine (media) already told people how to feel about this film. As people are actually seeing it and we are not entirely the drones I make us out to be, clearly we are sharing with each other. I was criticizing the publicty for the film for presuming how we would feel after having seen the film and exploiting that. The created expectation lended to my disappointment.

[oscar jubis]

*I respect your desire not to spoil the film for readers who haven't seen it. It's difficult at times not to discuss certain narrative developments because sometimes you have to be revealing in order to put your ideas across in a review.

*The publicity/marketing department of a film's distributor has to find an angle to "sell" a movie. By that I mean, a way to get you into the theatre. But I think you overestimate an ad campaign's ability to dictate how one would feel watching any given movie. I think audiences (and most critics) genuinely like this movie. They like how it makes them feel. And perhaps more importantly, I think they like what the movie says. Not that the film's messages are novel or groundbreaking, but they are presented with verve and a degree of freshness. Little Miss Sunshine's critique of the culture's obsession with winning and "measuring up" seems to be hitting a nerve with viewers. These characters, who are painfully and deeply flawed, who are having difficulty coping with loss or failure yet remain lovable and endearing, are being embraced by viewers. The concept that life is a series of "contests", and that we're constantly being evaluated to determine our worth, accurately reflects our society at this moment in time. What I appreciate most about the film is how it conveys that this gallery of fuckups constitute a good family. And that this man and this woman who constantly disagree and bicker have a good marriage, because they love, support and make accomodations for each other. The performances by the six actors playing the Hoovers are excellent; no small reason why the film works so well.

*I'm not saying the film is a masterpiece or in any way perfect. It has its flaws and its limitations.
Success seminars and kiddie beauty contests certainly illustrate what's wrong with our sense of values, but the latter is perhaps too facile a target. Particularly so when the contest director is depicted as a grotesque caricature. The hospital's bereavement counselor also seemed poorly realized. Then again, maybe a comedy needs targets of derision.
Two brief episodes seemed quite forced and contrived. 1) The gay uncle somehow running into his ex-lover at a highway convenience store. 2) Dad managing to get a complete stranger to loan him his moped for the night. I guess the plot required it.

*In response to your objections, I don't think a film with a plot that transpires over the course of a few days can "resolve" a character's depression or long-standing marital issues. Not beyond hinting that time and the support of his family will help the depressed scholar get over the break-up, and suggesting that the marital "issues" are relatively minor given their strengths.
The teenager hasn't "gotten over" his disappointment. He seems to have been able to put it aside, so to speak, because this is Olive's "moment". It evidences a certain maturity that he was able to do that. That's how I see it.

[tabuno]

I went to see this movie last Sunday because of the buzz. I found this movie tantalizing and the best balance and protrayal of comedy-drama of any movie I've seen this year. Most of the comments I've read seem to be understandable but since I was an avid supporter of Lost In Translation (2003) I assume the reader will understand why I can overlook the minor concerns of its critics. I don't believe that lose ends in this instance or the overly easy solutions really have to be considered forced or impossible as a drag to this movie. Sometimes fantastic, unusual, or coincidental events do happen. I loved this movie and hope to see some awards bestowed on it.

[oscar jubis]

Any favorite scenes Tab?
Two that come to mind... The tender one in the motel room between Grandpa and Olive. And the hilarious one in which a cop figures Dad doesn't want to open the trunk because he doesn't want his family to find out he likes porn, while Grandpa's corpse goes unnoticed.

[tabuno]

There is a scene when the sister is told by her mother or father to try to "talk" some sense into her brother about continuing their trip which probably surprised a number of people.

[Chris Knipp]

Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris: Little Miss Sunshine

A perfect little film, truly fun and surprisingly real

Review by Chris Knipp

Little Miss Sunshine is a splendidly simple piece of screen stagecraft: it is about characters and a situation that brings them all together, and as only a film can, it takes them on the road. So it’s a road picture. About a weird family in New Mexico whose members all get roped into taking a little girl to California to compete in a kind of beauty pageant for little girls. Actually the family isn’t so much weird as it is heightened. The father Richard Hoover (Greg Kinnear) is a motivational speaker with a “nine steps” program he’s concocted. He’s full of confidence and looks like a successful businessman, only he isn’t successful; he’s a failure. He’s no Tony Robbins; he isn’t anybody, and he’s broke. His 15-year-old son Dwayne (Paul Dana) is a depressed teen who’s taken a vow of silence and reads Nietsche all the time; he wants to become a fighter pilot and won’t speak till he’s assured a place at the Air Force Academy. The wife and mother Sheryl Hoover (Toni Colette) is struggling with the family’s problems, but she’s not so unusual in herself. The grandpa, dad’s father Edwin (Alan Arkin), is a grouchy but spirited eccentric. He’s been kicked out of a retirement community for, we must presume, using foul language, advocating promiscuous sex, and taking hard drugs, things he does freely now at home. And a new addition to the household is Richard’s brother Frank (Steve Carell), a gay professor and the number one Proust scholar in the United States, who’s just attempted suicide over a male student who dumped him in favor of the number two Proust scholar. He’s lost his teaching post, had to live in a motel, and been passed over for a MacArthur genius award for Proust scholar number two. The Hoovers rescue Frank from the hospital.

Frank’s put in Dwayne’s bedroom, where Dwayne writes a message on a pad: DON’T KILL YOURSELF TONIGHT. Olive (Abitgail Breslin) is just a little girl with an enormous enthusiasm for competing in a beauty pageant. She’s sweet and has a nice smile and pretty skin but she’s ordinary looking and has a tummy and wears big glasses. There isn’t much time to get Olive to the pageant in California when she learns she’s allowed to compete, and there’s no way Richard will permit but to drive in their old VW bus. The bus soon loses its clutch and it can’t be fixed, so they have to give it a running start by pushing it or drifting it down a hill.

The element of surprise is important to the pleasure Miss Sunshine can abundantly provide, so it’s impossible to reveal how the story progresses from there. All we can tell you is that on the road, the family members don’t escape from their problems or their dysfunctions; these continue and have to be confronted. The pageant, when they finally get there at the very last possible minute, is a bit of a shocker for all concerned. It’s a sign of how admirable this little film is that one can’t sum up its world-view, though one feels it does have one. There’s something about families here: their unexpectedness, the way people in them seem more extreme than they are, and turn out to be better than anybody thought. There’s gentle fun made of institutions and laws and politicians and the commodification of childhood and the crass culture of "winners" and "losers," but nothing gets in the way of the story, and one’s never distracted or bored for a single minute. Minor characters are treated rather cruelly, as is the beauty pageant (it almost makes one gag) and the film's economy also means the omission of some explanatory details. But simply drawn as the characters are (and despite Sunshine's Sundance Festival origins), there's no sense of indie cliché or indie contrivance or indie cuteness here. This is a triumph of minimalism. Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, who directed, and Michael Arndt, who wrote the screenplay, have put together a beautiful thing. It wouldn’t have worked, of course, if the actors hadn’t all contributed so ably and evenhandedly to the enterprise. The result is truly fun, and surprisingly real.

P.s. Okay...near-perfect. But in the field of this year's (2006) American films, it's damn-near perfect.

[tabuno]

One of the difficulties with writing reviews is to make them interesting and describing a movie without spoiling it for others. I have to assume after reading Chris' review that he is a professional movie critic who gets pay a decent salary because his description of this movie is so well done without spoiling the story for the audience, it's amazing. It's a brilliant piece of writing because it's so descriptive, concise, and tantalizing.

[Chris Knipp]

That's kind of you. Would that it were true--my work is unpaid. I have been guilty of giving away endings, but I've gotten better on that I hope. There are times when it is okay to give away more details, but this movie is all in the details, so I had to refrain and only hint.

[bix171]

A relentlessly depressing, manipulative and condescending film, "Little Miss Sunshine" is a glowing example of how co-opted American independant cinema has become. Ostensibly a parody of the roadtrip genre, in its efforts to both confound and please its audience the film stoops from the onset to mock its characters and invites the audience to join in: everyone has a quirk easily identifiable and just as easy to ridicule, from the rigid motivational speaker (Greg Kinnear) to the harried wife (Toni Colette) to her gay, suicidal brother (Steve Carell, nicely showing some range) to the young son who's taken a vow of silence (Paul Dano) all the way to the iconclastic grandpa who happens to be a--guffaw!--heroin addict (a seemingly disinterested Alan Arkin). The characters throw their weirdness onto the film's central focus, seven year old Olive (Abagail Breslin, who carries the weight of the picture on her shoulders and does a job worthy of award consideration), whose desire to compete in a children's beauty pageant is the reason for the roadtrip. Until its' climax. there's nothing in this picture that seems even remotely spontaneous or opening to any depth: every twitch, every plot turn is completely predictable (the script is a debut by Michael Arndt); but when it does get to its appalling conclusion, the pageant itself, the rug is pulled out from under the audience, which is expected to suddenly rush forth with a wellspring of sympathy at the morally dubious goings-on designed, incredibly tastelessly, to be a feelgood moment. The directors are Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris; they're either in collusion with Arndt in their cynicism and contempt or they're completely clueless. Thanks, Weinstein brothers, for unleashing a spirit of independant film completly reliant on box-office appeal and Oscar recognition.

[bix171]

By the way, a better example of what Chris Knipp calls "the commodification of childhood"--a term well-put-- than this would be Michael Ritchie's woefully underrated "Smile" (1975) about a teenage beauty pageant in a small California town. It's a personal film from Ritchie, one in a series of films he made about winning and losing in America ("The Candidate", "Downhill Racer" and "The Bad News Bears").

[oscar jubis]

Excellent point, bix.