the right to be a loser

Rating: 8/10 (22 June 2007)

'Little Miss Sunshine' is not at all my kind of movie, and yet I enjoyed watching it. The story is about a gathering of characters who call themselves a family, each bringing his or her own combination of dreams, stereotypes and disappointments, trying to make their ways in the context of the very American competitive system to which none seems to fit very well. When the little daughter in the family wins the right for a hopeless participation in a kids beauty pageant the family embarks in a trip that would make them maybe see where the right value of their lives lies.
The nice thing in this movie is the freshness and sincerity of acting. First time directors Dayton and Faris succeed to make the characters alive, distinct and likable from the very first minutes and so they remain for the whole duration of the movie. There is a lot of talk in the film about how not to be a loser, and apparently the characters as individuals and the family as a whole seem to be super-losers in the real world, yet on the human plan they end by being winners, and so they are in the hearts of the viewers.