Jon Monsarrat review: perfect but a little too dark

Rating: 10/10 (7 August 2006)

Little Miss Sunshine is not a film about winners. Everyone in the movie is a failure in some fashion. And without giving anything away, I can tell you that you're not going to get a Hollywood ending. Ultimately the family goes through a lot and learns a lot, but the road to getting there left me shaken. It reminded me of the film Breakdown which is so frenetic and panicky that I had the jitters all day even though Breakdown ends on a happy note.
This is not a good film to see if you need a laugh. Maybe some people will find it uplifting but I did not. It's a dark comedy, a little too dark for me. Dark comedy is rarely laugh-out-loud funny, the kind of comedy I prefer.
Despite that, the acting is superb, and I like the van that's busted but works with a little sweat as a metaphor for the family as a whole. The ending was classic and entirely unexpected, and managed to be wild and yet make sense to the characters as well. There is ultimately two messages about winners and losers, one being the beauty show (a good one) and the other being from Proust (which I didn't buy).
Who should see this film:
-- People who like dramas, just the adults. This film is R-rated, it is not a children's film. But not if you're expecting laugh-out-loud funny or need an uplifting film to calm your day.
-- Inspirational speakers with a 9-point program for personal improvement I toyed around with an 8 out of 10, but I'm going to have to give Little Miss Sunshine a 9 out of 10. I wanted a happier ending but admittedly it would have been out of place within the dark comedy theme.