Little Miss Sunshine

Year: 2006
Running time: 101 minutes
Certificate: 15
Language: English
Screenplay: Michael Arndt
Directors: Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris
Starring: Abigail Breslin, Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, Paul Dano, Steve Carell, Alan Arkin

Olive is full of excitement.

Another day, another indie movie about a dysfunctional family. And yet, like Juno, The Royal Tenenbaums, Napoleon Dynamite and Donnie Darko (all completely different, yet all have a barely functioning family unit at their hearts), Little Miss Sunshine still manages to be engaging and original. Set around a family's road trip to enter their young daughter into the Little Miss Sunshine pageant, there's almost nothing but arguing and complaining throughout the entire trip, but you still find yourself liking them. Each character is self-involved almost to the point of ignoring everything and everyone else and it's a testament to the performances and the writing that you find yourself forgiving each character their faults and sympathising with their plights.

Sheryl Hoover (Toni Collette) is the mother barely able to hold the family unit together, her husband Richard (Greg Kinnear) investing everything into marketing his self-improvement technique, which he finds difficult due to the fact that it clearly doesn't work. Dwayne (Paul Dano) is the miserable son who has taken a vow of silence until he achieves his ambition of being a jet pilot. The granddad Edwin (Alan Arkin) is a favourite of mine, working on dance routines with his grand-daughter Olive (Abigail Breslin) and giving life advice to Dwayne ("Fuck a lot of women.") Into this Sheryl brings her brother Frank (Steve Carell), who has recently attempted to commit suicide after losing his lover and his professional reputation.

There are moments of both comedy and drama on the road, but the moment that sticks with me is when Dwayne finds out he is colourblind, which prevents him from ever realising his pilot dream. He breaks his vow of silence in an outpouring of grief which takes the form of scathing criticism of his entire family. Dano does an impressive job of expressing the frustration of a young man stung by the unfairness of life, denied the only thing that means anything to him. Perhaps this is why he is the first to see the inevitably disastrous result of his little sister's attempt to become Little Miss Sunshine - his own problems no longer consume all of his energies and he opens his eyes to those around him.

Olive's family come together in support.

Despite them apparently hating each other, the ending is oddly touching, as they all come together in support of Olive to save her from ridicule and embarrassment. The film does a grand job of staying funny and at the same time showing just how disturbingly sinister and disgusting the pre-teen beauty queen market in America is. On the surface it appears to be wholesome and sugar-coated, but there is an ugly undercurrent that reeks of displaying the young competitors as adults and all the sexuality that implies. It seems odd to inflict such a psychological torture upon one's supposedly treasured offspring.

Highlighting this hypocrisy is the moment when Abigail does an overtly sexual dance routine (which is strangely hilarious), shocking the judges. At the same time the other young girls walk around in make-up or are prancing about in swimsuits. The judges are likely upset at being faced with the truth buried underneath 'innocent' pageants like these. When it is simmering under the surface while pretending innocence it's all the more disturbing.

A quality comedy which shows how often the most mismatched family will come together in support when it's required.

Score: 7/10

Angie at Empire and I are on the same page, but Peter at The Guardian sees something different.