Like an Annoying Sitcom...But Far Worse!

Rating: 2/10 (20 August 2006)

WARNING: SPOILERS!!! I saw Little Miss Sunshine with a nearly-full house at the Guild Theatre, and it seemed everyone ate it up, even applauding at certain points. Commericals for the film feature a snippet from another review proclaiming (and I paraphrase here): "...a real crowd pleaser!" Yes, it is, but...
There is a place for the exploration of family dysfunction in films, but its a tricky topic to tackle without tipping into over-the-top, ham-fisted characterizations and plot developments. Just because real-life families can be constituted of diverse, bickering oddballs, doesn't mean making them into caricatures on screen is the most accurate way to portray them.
Enter Little Miss Sunshine, a film mired in the faky and obvious. The plot (whole family piles into VW bus for road trip to little girl's beauty pageant, and they gotta hurry!) has a built-in urgency already that needs no augmentation: the traumatic curveballs thrown at the characters seem piled on for the sake of being piled on. The film's two themes (beauty comes from within, family bonds can triumph over a family's differences) aren't told in any particularly new way: they just happen to be told by a stellar cast under the guise of an indie film.
From the beginning we're given stereotypes that occupy only one dimension:
* The motivational speaker dad (Greg Kinnear) whose actually the loser he fears he and his family will hopefully never become;
* The shrill hapless wife (a wasted Toni Collette) who, save for a few touching scenes, does nothing but act helplessly flummoxed by the madness of her family;
* The heroin-snorting raunchy grandpa (Alan Arkin, who usually picks more complex roles than the "Hey Look! I'm a crazy dirty old man!" shtick that he perpetrates here. He can make most anything funny, but he's powerless here);
* The gay suicidal uncle (Steve Carell, shining in an against-type role) who, though perhaps the film's most sympathetic character, can't escape the too-convenient gauntlet of troubles thrown down by the film's plot contrivances;
*The sullen, vow-of-silence-taking, weight-lifting, Nietzsche-loving, wanna-be fighter pilot (whew) teenage son (Paul Dano), who explains the Message of the Movie with the line "Life is just one ****ing beauty pageant after another!" long after we figured the movie's point (or what it thinks its point is) out;
*And finally, Little Miss Sunshine herself, Abigail Breslin (the cute little girl in "Signs") as Olive (with Carell, the film's other bright spot), who thankfully is too involved in being a little girl to be fully affected by the toxic "Don't be a loser!" claptrap her dad peddles. (The sweet relationship with her grandpa seemed out of place, but only because it seemed so *geniune*.)
Characters such as Greg Kinnear's in Sunshine -- those who think they know best and make darn sure the rest of the world knows it -- are unpleasant to watch, but are tolerable if there is a shred of sympathy within them. The shreds are few in this film, and coalesce far too late to make us care about what happens to him; by the time the film reaches its climax (an amusing and clever, if not a too-tidy we-love-each-other-deep-down, moment), we're hoodwinked into thinking he (and the others, for that matter) have changed. The film wants us to believe that these are real characters despite their looniness, but asks us to accept the lie of its conclusion. We all want happy endings, but they only work if they're believable.
The film does indict the child pageantry industry with a great eye for detail that shows just how creepy it really is, but its nothing no one hasn't gathered from even a few "We confront controlling mothers!" promos for Dr. Phil or Oprah. All anyone really needs to bridge family gaps, according to the film, are a few days on the road, an endless string of can-you-believe-it? challenges, and a rickety excuse for transportation (here, an annoyingly malfunctioning VW bus held together by unfunny running gags).
Early in the film, Carell's uncle and Dano's teen consider staying at home while the family makes the trip. I truly felt a deep sympathy pang, then, when they had to go (because, well, that's what the plot demands, and because I've also been on similar trips). Later, avoiding the pageant like the plague, Carell comments that one should relish life's misery, or else you'll never learn anything. To that end, you'll learn a lot from this film. Here, then, is something I learned: If you think happy endings come from nowhere, you'll probably buy what it's selling. Me, I'm staying at home and reading Nietzsche.