Little Miss Sunshine (DVD)
The running time is 1 hr. 41 mins..
Little Miss Sunshine serves its purpose as it can quite possibly be described as the opposite of almost any road trip movie you have ever seen. It is both comical and sad as it takes quite the eclectic family core and instead of using all the conventional comedic punch lines takes each punch line to the limit and then switches it up on you. Really that is the genius of this movie. It takes the typical situations and just as it gets to that all-too-familiar punch line it just goes the other way or just stops. There are so many moments in Little Miss Sunshine in which Michael Arndt's script could have turned into slapstick comedy it isn't even funny and even when it does cross the line it is more heart-warming than it is over the top.
The film stars Steve Carell as Frank a suicide survivor, his first non-all comedy role, Sheryl Hoover (Toni Collette) is his sister and your typical middle class mother who is married to Richard (Greg Kinnear), a self help guru who is trying to sell his 9 Step program to the world. Sheryl and Richard live with Richard's heroin addicted father (Alan Arkin) and have two children, Dwayne and Olive, Dwayne (Paul Dano) has not said a word for nine months and Olive (Abigail Breslin) is the family's youngest who dreams of being Miss USA, which is the idea the story centers on. Through a series of circumstances to open the film the family finds itself on a road tip to the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant in California from their dysfunctional home in Albuquerque.
Yeah, this is not your typical family, but who wants typical when it comes to movies right? On top of taking a comical look at a family with enough varying qualities it is almost scary the film also takes a jab at the crazed parents that dress their kids up as porcelain dolls for these silly child beauty pageants. With as much craziness there is in the Hoover family they may have some of the biggest hearts and most realistic outlooks on life there is to be had. It is a family that judges as much as it loves. It speaks highly of the family unit and is really a breakthrough for the music video directing couple of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris and first time screenwriter Michael Arndt. Little Miss Sunshine hits on some touchy issues and handles them well and with an even hand.
After watching the four alternate endings that appear on this DVD I also realized Dayton and Faris had a good eye for just how far to take the comedy so it didn't cross over into the absurd, that is hard to do when you are going for laughs. On top of the alternate endings there are also two commentaries, one with the aforementioned trio and a second with the directors alone.
Overall I was impressed with the movie, but I am not ga-ga over it like so many across the industry seem to be. Little Miss Sunshine is a rare movie and a treat to find, typical of something you will find out of it's Sundance Film Festival roots and I can't see anyone not enjoying it. I just don't think it is worth much more than a one night rental.