Cute without ever really committing itself to anything, the film enjoys its diverting road movie approach and its quaint laughs but is difficult to get too excited about.

Rating: 6/10 (6 May 2010)

Six people in a bright yellow VW camping van, each of them as wildly different to the next, travelling and therefore forced into being thrust together as they journey to California for something. One's a suicidal academic; one's a disgruntled elderly man; one's a rebellious, frizzy haired adolescent who's refusing to speak; one's a middle of the road housewife; one's an easy-going, likable husband and father who's just trying to do the best for those he loves and one's a girl of about ten whom thinks the world is her oyster. There you go, there's your pitch and such a wildly uneven premise to a film is only fitting given how sporadic and only mildly diverting Little Miss Sunshine really is. The idea is you pick the character you see most representative of you, and map onto them as they all plough on together.
The film is good natured but it's ultimately a little flat and uninvolved, relying on comedic content that I didn't find so comedic and a rich amount of symbolism representing what these people are thinking and feeling, the kind of which we are all able to figure out anyway. Take the instance early on, for example, in which Frank (Carell), housewife Sheryl's (Collette) suicidal brother, sits deathly alone in a hospital area after a recent bout of suicidal ideation; the camera situated so as to capture how it is he feels and where he is in life; or later on, in which, whilst meeting a business cohort by a swimming pool somewhere, father and husband Richard (Kinnear) talks of how he's struggling but really trying to wade through all the issues and problems his life skills company has hit as a completely unrelated person swims by, or wades by, in the water, systematically representational of his own plight. The film likes the idea of linking commonplace places and events onto a wider spectrum of struggle, manifested within its lead characters.
I think I was supposed to feel surprised; be humoured; feel angered and then rather pleased at most of what happens in Little Miss Sunshine, throughout. The film sees young Olive (Breslin), youngest of the Hoover family based in New Mexico, pine to be an entrant into a beauty contest in California; something that everyone eventually all agrees in heading off to. Being a road movie of sorts, the film is given all kinds of reasons to have all manner of wacky items crop up to bulk out the runtime and deliver a few feint laughs along the way. Yes, they get partially lost; yes, they're pulled over by the police and yes, the van does indeed break down, that then resulting in a rather annoying reoccurring gag that sees them have to keep it in a consistent state of motion so as to avoid having to kill the ignition. Once you've mapped yourself onto either the screwy, oddball, Nietzsche reading son Dwayne (Dano) if you're of that ilk; or the toothy, smiley, beaming Sheryl if you're of that ilk; or the disgruntled elderly gentleman Edwin (Arkin) if you're of that ilk, then there's no limit in the manner of fun you may or may not have in watching these wacky misadventures unfold.
Despite it having its characters roll along toward their destination, the film is almost certainly circular in its structure; allowing a number of the characters to progress from various states to otherwise different. One character is alive and well prior to the trip, but dead by the time it's concluded; the same with another character of whom remains mute for most of the duration, but undergoes a discovery and we observe how that changes him whereas someone else has a definitive dream at the start but realises they were well out of their depth when the time comes to live it. The respective arcs are sweet enough, harmless in their basic establishing; evolving and then placing into a newer order but it's little more than mildly engaging. The writer, a certain Michael Arndt, is, I think, a little worried that all the wavy, messy content will bury what it is he wants to say and that's highlighted in a scene between two characters whom share the piece's moment of pure exposition: a sequence in which, standing on a pier with the wide open ocean behind them, they speak of life and life being what you make it and that one needs to suffer in order to journey or learn. The seemingly endless ocean behind them acting as a clear representation of the great unknown, a link to what unknown delights await you within the vast mass of everything.
The film is a wavy and sporadic effort; desperately wanting the quirky fact they're all travelling to where they're going in a bright yellow VW van to attain a sort of instantly recognisable, if not 'cult', status. Along the way, the film will provide a range of wacky scenes which ought to feel more heartfelt than they actually are when Edwin, the eldest character, who it's established is a drug addict, passes on advice to the youngest in Olive and takes on a kind of mentor role but it just comes off as a little creepy more than anything. The film tackles death as an issue and how it affects families when a certain character is removed from the text but does so with a pinch of salt rather than with a full blooded exploration of any kind. In short, it's a mildly diverting road picture hybrid which is a little off colour in tone but with a few laughs; certain instances contained within demonstrate directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris' eye for film-making and this was clearly a project that they were really up for, but the film does too much if anything; wildly chopping from one locale to another and cramming too many characters doing and experiencing too much, all of which mysteriously combines into something rather underwhelming.