Good Spirit Half Baked

Rating: 5/10 (3 September 2006)

I'm disappointed that audiences are so easily wowed. This movie has some very funny lines and situations, some excellent acting, and a nice madcap sense of humor, but it's also very sloppy in places, blithely contriving a number of unlikely plot twists.
Steve Carell is pitch-perfect, particularly in the early scene where he describes his suicide attempt to Olive. Toni Collette is also good in a blah role. Abigail Breslin is a great find: totally believable and great at turning on the tears. Alan Arkin is funny but something's a little off in his performance; his foul mouth is a good idea but it feels contrived -- he's not senile, so it seems like his behavior should come across as motivated by anger or manipulation. It's odd that the family gets shocked by his language -- they must be used to it, and should have developed a mechanism for dealing with it. Paul Dano also feels surfacey, actory and inauthentic -- again, a wonderfully conceived role, but his performance needs something. Some kind of vulnerability maybe. Greg Kinnear on the other hand looks and feels the part and totally drew me in. His performance in the opening scene is possibly the best thing in the movie. The part is a bit one-note, but he transcends. Also there's an outstanding performance by Paula Newsome as Linda, the bitchy grievance counselor. Beth Grant is very good as the pageant official, and Matt Winston is perfect as the pageant MC.
Some people have complained about the family smuggling Grampa's body out of the hospital, but I believed they might do it, although they might have come closer to getting caught. But the lack of any real grieving beyond a few moist eyes strains belief and makes the family seem pretty callous. And the police officer picking up the porno mags in the back of the van but not noticing a great big sheet-covered body also feels unlikely.
Steve Carell running into his ex-lover and the Proust scholar who stole his thunder in a gas station somewhere in the Arizona desert is possibly the most contrived plot point in the history of film. And Paul Dano suddenly finding out that he's color-blind and Steve Carell somehow knowing that this means he must give up his dream of being a pilot -- and telling him so! -- runs a close second. Also Dano's reaction, immediately throwing a tantrum and giving up his vow of silence, doesn't seem realistic. I imagine it would take time for him to accept that everything he's been striving for has been lost; he wouldn't just take an adult's word for it.
There are many more such moments throughout the film that make me feel that the filmmakers should have spent a little more time on the script; messy little moments that took me out of a film that I wanted to like. Very irritating.
The production design is just outstanding. The very lived-in suburban house, Greg Kinnear's dad-wear, Paul Dano's angry-teenager art, everything is done with accuracy and style. The whole look of the Miss Sunshine Pageant is perfect. Gaudy, grotesque and hilarious.
That Olive's routine turns out to be a stripper's bump and grind is pretty great. I didn't see it coming and it totally made sense. It was nice that they teased it by showing Arkin teach her to do the tiger move early on, but again it should've somehow been established why no one else in the family had ever seen her practice. The pageant itself is wonderfully staged -- very realistic, up to the point where the whole family gets up on stage -- another feel-good moment unearned.
Another quibble: it's mentioned that the family is from Albuquerque, but I didn't get any sense of a regional culture from the way they spoke and acted.
I did like Steve Carell's anecdote about Proust, that the part of his life in which he struggled was the best part. And I also liked Greg Kinnear's line that the only losers are people that don't pursue their dreams because they're afraid of failing.
A fairly enjoyable movie but it could've been so much better.