Little Miss Sunshine

Little Miss Sunshine is the debut feature from the directing team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, who just happen to be married, and to each other at that. It's funny how the world works. Anyway, the film is in part a satire on the obsession with winning which drives so many little league fathers into the seedy underworld of referee-knifing, but it also turns out to be much more than that. It's also a charming, funny family road movie along the lines of the first Vacation movie, and a touching family observational drama with a knack for depicting both the tension and the affection that come with these family relationships. In other words, it's a movie about a family.

So it's a family, we've established that, and they are on the road. But who are they? Where are they going? Why? Well, it's the Hoover family, on the road from Albuquerque to Redondo Beach in order for the young daughter Olive to compete in the Little Miss Sunshine children's pageant. She's been practicing for months with her grandfather, and though the Hoovers have been straining financially and emotionally lately, Olive's excitement (and a small motherly bribe to Olive's silent, recalcitrant, Nietzche-reading brother) gets them all into the family bus. Now I want to make it quite clear here that the characters here are not "quirky," they just happen to be detailed and well-drawn, so they stand out in comparison to cookie-cutter characters infesting, let's say, the still-unceasing flow of post-Ringu, post-post-Scream horror crapfests defiling the last decade or so. Sorry for all the hyphenates in that last sentence, but post-Ringu, post-post Scream horror crapfests really get my blood boiling.

So the writing was great, a large part of the success for the movie is due to the cast, every member of which hits the nail on the head. Abigail Breslin, best known for aceing the role of dear little Bo in Signs, plays Olive with surprising depth. The excitement, the nerves, the pressure, the delight: it all shows clearly in her face, beyond reciting lines. Greg Kinnear and Toni Collette play her parents, a loving but strained couple barely keeping above the financial waters. Paul Dano (L.I.E.) plays Olive's previously mentioned brother Dwayne, who's taken a vow of silence until reaching his goal of becoming an Air Force pilot. This might seem like a silly gimmick on paper, but in the course of the film it's played to perfection, with great humor and even ferocity. While everyone does a fantastic job, the two standout characters here are obviously Olive's grandpa (Alan Arkin) and her maternal uncle Frank (Steve Carell). Arkin's glee in playing a slightly debauched, vulgar old man is apparent from the start, but again the writing and the acting make the character more than the sum of its parts. There's not a line he says that won't perk up your ears. Carell is at his wry best as the gay genius Proust expert whose life has taken a series of downturns, leading to a recent attempt at suicide. He has a distance from the daily minutiae of the other family members that allows some outsider perspective to enter, and his interactions with success-obssessed Kinnear are a highlight.

As far as events along the way, it's a road trip movie so expect to see some roadblocks, figurative and literal. Those come with the territory, and are handled well because the characters make it so. Once again, I can't emphasize this enough, this isn't just another film with quirky characters thrown into a farcical situation together. Nor is this family the generic catch-all meant to represent all of America. It's a family of fleshed-out individuals interacting in a confined space along a goal-oriented journey, and since the relationships are always interesting, funny, maddening, saddening, and touching, the film succeeds in a big way. Also, the finale is one of the funniest film moments I've seen in years. Little Miss Sunshine seems to be gradually widening in release. Go see it. Make it a double feature with Crank, even.