grandpa's life

Rating: 8/10 (17 January 2007)

The feeling I had after watching "Little Miss Sunshine" was very mixed, although I liked the film very much. Why did Grandpa want the innocent Olive to shock the audience with a routine that would all but assure her losing? The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that the grandfather's back story was really the key to the movie. The advice he gives his grandson (you know, about a LOT of DIFFERENT women) and the pride he conveys to his loser son for at least TRYING to make it on his own, point to one fact: Grandpa was not the free spirit he appeared to be, but a sad individual who had probably been faithfully married to the same woman for 50 years, and had worked slavishly for the same company for decades, too. This is why he devised the outrageous routine for Olive, to thumb his own frustrated nose at society and the phonies he knew would be attending such a lame pageant. There was no triumph for the family except for their individual realizations of how much they needed, and loved, each other. And there was still hope for all of them that they would not lead as quietly desperate lives as poor old Grandpa.
PS: the fact that the producers thought Alan Arkin too virile for the role only bears out their concept of the character being a pathetic, frustrated individual.