DVD Review: Little Miss Sunshine

A life’s-like-that funny flick about a real but really dysfunctional family

Little Miss Sunshine is a provocative, thoughtful film. From the first scene, where seven year old Olive’s (Abigail Breslin) glasses fill up with TV reflected images of a beauty pageant, to the expert choreography around the dinner table, to Dwayne’s (Paul Dano) roadside breakdown, the sensitive attention to detail is striking.

Teenagers and action junkies won’t enjoy this film. Neither will movie buffs addicted to traditional over-the-top blockbusters. Others who heard that Little Miss Sunshine attracted Oscar’s approval might have overly high expectations. See, it’s a simple film, but elegant and subtly intelligent.

Michael Arndt’s screenplay is a masterpiece; his characters are exceptionally well developed. Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris direct a star studded cast on a road trip from dysfunction, to breakdown, to…well, what can only be described as the triumphant coming together of a family from the verge of catastrophe.

There is plenty of irony in the film, and thanks to a subtle directing approach, the humor and the irony increasingly creep up on you. In the opening scenes the title, for example, is placed over the tragic mug of gay uncle Frank (Steve Carell from 40 Year Old Virgin), who has botched a recent suicide attempt (following his student lover falling in love with another professor). Head of the Hoover family is motivational speaker Richard (Greg Kinnear). The irony is that Richard’s entire livelihood now rests on his nine point strategy for success – which he is attempting (unsuccessfully) to market. This places tremendous strain on Richard, and so too his wife Sheryl (Toni Collette), and the effects obviously filter down to the others.

Sheryl attempts to keep things from falling apart, but she is worn out, and in private, argues vehemently with Richard. One scene in a hotel room, where they sit on opposite sides of the bed, backs facing each other after a marathon session of yelling, says it all.

Then there’s Dwayne, Olive’s older brother, who has taken a vow of silence because he ‘hates everyone’ and rejects almost everything about the world. This character is even more creepy given the recent headlines about the massacre at Virginia Tech. It is interesting to see how Dwayne repeatedly shuts himself off from the world, rejects it, and then reinforces this rejection by reading Nietzsche, and by wearing a yellow anti-Jesus t-shirt.

Each family member has an overly simplified definition of themselves, and what success is (or what it is they think they can do). Their personal obsessions divide them, making them a number of individuals that seem, at first, coincidentally to belong to the same family. In fact the directors, in their voice over dialogue (one of the special features of the DVD) admit that they opened the movie in a way that would not immediately demonstrate the relationship these people had towards each other. But this becomes clearer later. What is less clear is how each member, and the group as a unit, will graduate out of their individual and collective failures.

At one point Dwayne screams at his family: “Divorced! Bankrupt! Suicidal! I hate you!” These accusations are even more poignant and ironic because they’re hurled just after Dwayne has had a breakdown. (He realizes that becoming a pilot may be a lot more difficult than he first anticipated).

Meanwhile Richard sets an assertive, if kooky example to his family. He loudly chastises his own father for speaking his (somewhat vulgar) thoughts, but his father (wonderfully portrayed by Alan Arkin) basically ignores him. It’s impossible not to be amused by his advice to 15 year old Dwayne at one point in the bus. With the whole family (except Olive, who is listening to music on earphones) listening in, the heroin snorting grandfather espouses his wisdom to the young man: “I’m going to give you some advice. Sleep with a lotta women.”

Richard’s motivational mantras strike a hollow cord with his own family, who have heard it all over and over again. All this private angst is set in motion by a yellow VW bus on a three day journey to Redondo Beach California, where there will be a beauty pageant called Little Miss Sunshine.

The VW bus is also character all of its own. It’s dysfunctional, but basically works.

Interestingly, this film is not about success or winning. It is how people individually and as a family deal with failure. It is how different people cope with adversity, and importantly, how people deal with each other’s failures. It turns out that through failure a family can finally learn how to operate as one.