Where's the fun?

Rating: 2/10 (28 February 2007)

Full disclosure: I didn't watch all of this movie. After forty minutes of experiences ranging from tedium to offensiveness, I turned off the DVD. It's so much easier than walking out of a theater.
Whatever happened to families in movies? From Andy Hardy to Beaver Cleaver, the family was once the cornerstone of society as reflected in the media. Nowadays, one is hard pressed to find a movie family that isn't preceded by the word "dysfunctional." I suspect this is a reflection of the new Hollywood system, where serial polygamy is the norm. Why would such people make movies about folks for whom "'Till death do us part" actually meant something? Instead, Miss Sunshine gives us the standard shtick of homosexual pseudo-intellectuals and nihilistic teens, along with a foul-mouthed, heroin-snorting (and Oscar-winning) grampa who lived through the era when values meant something but apparently chose to reject them.
Sorry, but what many have called an "hilarious" comedy should have made me laugh during the first 40 minutes. Little Miss Sunshine gave me only a drab, unrelenting cloud.