Little Miss Sunshine

I went into Little Miss Sunshine with high hopes, given the mostly sterling reviews. I came out thinking it was a good film, but not a great one. It's a look at one of the recent staples of film, the dysfunctional family, and an analysis of what makes someone a winner or a loser in life. The dad, Greg Kinnear, is a struggling entrepeneur who gives seminars on how to be a winner. His harried wife is Toni Collette, and their two kids are Paul Dano, an angry loner who has taken a vow of silence until he gets into the Air Force Academy, and Olive, a perky seven-year-old who dreams of becoming a beauty queen. Also in the extended family are a grandpa, Alan Arkin, who soothes his old age with heroin, and the newest member, Steve Carrell, Collette's brother and a Proust scholar, who has just tried to kill himself because his lover has run off with another eminent Proust scholar.

The catalyst that sets off the ensuing zaniness is that Olive, who finished second in a regional beauty pageant, becomes the winner when the actual winner can't make it to the finals. The family now has to get her to California from their home in New Mexico. They embark, bitter feelings and all, in an ancient yellow VW bus, and we're now off on another movie cliche, the road picture.

There are numerous laughs along the way that had the audience I was with laughing out loud, but I was just smiling. A lot of humor is mined from the bus itself, which has to pushed to get started. Kinnear plays such an overbearing prick that he becomes the foil for Cannell, who seems to be very sane for a failed suicide. Arkin, practically begging for a Supporting Actor nomination, really amps up the crotchedly-old-man routine. The script is loaded with implausible plot twists and coincidences that weigh the story down and lead to a climax that is meant to be heartwarming but just seemed too Hallmark card-ish to me. A few problems that I can mention without spoiling: Dano plays a character who hates everyone and buries himself in philosophers like Nietsche. It seems a stretch to me that he would have a goal that is so square as going to a military academy, where conformity would be demanded of him. Also, it seems odd to me that none of the family would have seen Olive's routine for the pageant, which turns out to be such a surprise.

I don't want to be too hard on this film, though, because it does have good dialogue and nice performances by Collette, Dano and Cannell. The direction is straightforward and flat, so the heavy lifting is done by the script and performances. I wanted to like this film more, but it just isn't as good as some of the reviews.