Quirky family road-trip

Rating: 10/10 (15 October 2006)

Olive Hoover (Abigail Breslin) is runner-up in a children's beauty pageant called 'Little Miss Sunshine', and has been invited to the pageant's finals in California. Determined to see her perform, Olive's family all pile into a VW bus and make the long journey. Olive's father Richard (Greg Kinnear), the motivational speaker who is waiting to hit it big with his 'nine step program', her blunt mother Sheryl (Toni Collette), brother Dwayne (Paul Dano) who has taken a vow of silence until he takes his aviation exam and has communicated by writing on a note-pad for the past eight months. Also tagging along is Olive's beauty pageant coach, and heroin-addict grandfather (Alan Arkin) and uncle Frank (Steve Carrell) who was released from hospital 24 hours ago after a botched suicide attempt brought about when he lost his student lover to the man who has also stripped him of his title as the number one Proust scholar in the country.
'Little Miss Sunshine' is the first full-length feature film for husband and wife director's Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, who are best known for directing music videos. This is also screen-writer Michael Arndt's first film. The fact that this film has been created by 'fresh-blood' in Hollywood is obvious in the film's extremely fresh take on an old concept: family road-trip.
While publicity for the film has hyped it up as a laugh-out-loud comedy, a notion aided by the presence of Steve Carrell who has hit the big time since completing 'Little Miss Sunshine' with 'The 40 year old virgin' and his lead role in the U.S smash-hit TV show 'The Office'; this film is not as hilarious as I am sure some movie-goers assume it to be. It is a very, very dark comedy, which occasionally slips in a few easy laughs but ultimately finds it's best moments in the more serious scenes, exploring grim issues. This is a fantastically quirky film which will find viewers falling in love with this family of misfits and freaks, and secretly wishing our more ordinary relatives were just as peculiar. As one would expect, the film's conclusion comes at the 'Little Miss Sunshine' beauty pageant. The finale is very much hyped up and delivers, two-fold. The ending at the pageant is exactly the kind of finish that will leave you completely satisfied.
At times, because I was expecting more humor thanks to the film's publicity and hype, I was a little disappointed at the sometimes far and few laughs. But, eventually letting go of expectation and anticipation, I found myself totally falling in love with this film. Steve Carrell was the stand-out for me, especially since this was a very different character for him, so far from the awkward virgin or hyper squirrel Steve seems to have become a celebrity overnight, and while he is thus far best known for his comedic work, with 'Little Miss Sunshine' he has managed to do what Bill Murray with 'Lost in Translation', Jim Carrey in 'The Truman show' and Robin Williams in 'Good Will Hunting' took years to do, and that is reach critical as well as commercial acclaim. The other two stand-outs for me are the always brilliant Alan Arkin as the heroin-addicted grandfather who imparts gross and brilliant wisdom, and Paul Dano as the silently suffering teenager.
This really is an amazing film: it won't be everyone's cup of tea, but for me at least, it is going down as a favorite.