Little Miss Sunshine

Been a long time since my last post. Sorry about that.I have had a shitload of work with uni. Why do they have to plan it so that all the assignments for my various papers are due within a few days of each other. It results in many missed lectures and an acute lack of sleep. Anyway, enough about University, on to more interesting stuff.

Well tonight I finally got my ass back down to a movie theatre and went and saw 'Little Miss Sunshine', the darling of last years Sundance Film Festival. Before I heap a whole load of masturbatory praise on this little gem I have to acknowledge that for the first 20minutes I was questioning all the hype this film has been getting since Sundance. I will go into my initial ambivalence later but in the end all that matters is that Little Miss Sunshine may well be one of the funniest and most endearing films of the year.

The film begins with an extended montage introducing us to the different members of the Hoover family, complete with all their eccentricities. We have the cranky grandfather with a penchant for heroin, the suicidal uncle who has just been released from hospital, a Nietzche reading depressive teenager vowed to silence, an overbearing father determined to live his life by a yet-to-be published generic self help mantra, the beauty pageant obsessed Olive and a mother who is desperate to hold this dysfunctional family together. If that ain't a dysfunctional family then I don't know what is.

I know dysfunctional families are becoming a bit of a cliche in indie movies nowadays but this one really works. After the brief introduction setting up the characters the film launches us on a 700 mile road-trip to California where Olive will compete in the 'Little Miss Sunshine' beauty pageant. Olive won the regional under-10 pageant after the original winner had to pull out, only there is no-one to take her. The family cannot afford to leave Frank on his own when he is meant to be on 24/7 suicide watch but at the same time Olive has been wanting this dream too much to not let her follow it. Naturally the whole family crams into their bright yellow VW and heads to California. Over the course of this 700 mile road-trip the Hoover family will go through a whole host of trials and tribulations, from a stolen corpse and a hilarious encounter with the law to multiple emotional breakdowns, a desperate scooter journey in the middle of the night and a VW that is stuck in 3rd and 4th gear (cue a hilarious running joke). To say this movie is offbeat is an understatement.

The acting is uniformly excellent. Steve Carell proves he is more than just a comic actor, showing his dramatic range and getting laughs without reverting to his more familiar persona. Alen Arkin's comic timing is excellent and steals almost every scene he is in. Abigail Breslin gives us one of the best child performances in many years, achieving that elusive goal of being utterly charming without that saccharine cuteness that seems to plague many young starlets. Paul Dano makes the most of a role which gives him little dialogue, communicating everything through his body posture and facial expressions. As the parents of this dysfunctional family both Greg Kinnear and Toni Collette give strong performances, determined to keep this family unit together.

The soundtrack has been largely composed by Devotchka, whose song 'How It Ends' featured on the trailer of Everything Is Illuminated. 'Till The End of Time' fits the movies offbeat wandering core to a tea while contributions by Sufjan Stevens, Rick James, Score and Tony Tisdale round out what will surely be one of the best soundtracks of the year. If the Hollywood studios have any sense I would expect to see Devotchka popping up a lot more in the future.

Offbeat indie movies have a tendency to be a bit hit and miss, with some episodic scenes falling out of place with the overall tone of the movie. This is what I was thinking during the beginning of the film and is one of the only problems I have with it. The scenes at the Hoover household felt a bit mis-matched and set up an offputting disjointed tone to the movie. In retrospect though, by the end of the film it is obvious that these early scenes are always working towards setting up the hilarious and heartfelt crescendo of the final act.

When the Hoover family finally get to California they are greeted with something that far outweighs anything they have had to put up with on the long road to get there. As the movie satirically points out, for all their dysfunctions the Hoover family is starkingly ordinary in relation to the image obsessed families of these beauty pageants who are little more than dressed up barbies. I don't want to spoil the ending for you because it is best experienced without prior knowledge but let me just say that it turns this disturbing sexualisation on its head in one of the most hilarious and satirical final acts I have seen in recent memory. As you leave the cinema you just try not walking out with a grin from ear to ear, safe in the knowledge that perhaps being perfect isn't all it's made out to be. In a society obsessed with winning it is important to remember that it is our peculiarities and dysfunctions that truly bind us together.

Final Verdict: A solid 8/10. It is rare to find a movie these days that manages to be hilariously funny yet without sacrificing the deeper issues that surround the film.