Little Miss Sunshine

Rating: 9/10 (4 April 2007)

Part road trip movie, part satire, Little Miss Sunshine is an absolute gem of a comedy, rightly lauded at the Sundance Film Festival, combining the traditional elements of road trips with plenty of dysfunction, and more than a few surprises.
It focuses on the Hoover family and their stressed filled lives as they cross the country in their VW van to take the youngest child, Olive, to the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant. Firstly, there's Dad, who's a failed motivational speaker, obsessed with 'winners' to the point of driving the family insane with his mottoes. Then there's Mum, whose pent up emotion is hidden by her need to keep sane and her family together. Firstborn Dwayne has taken a vow of silence until he's old enough to go to the Air Force academy, having read Nietzsche extensively. Grandpa was thrown out of his retirement home for using heroin, and now mopes about being suitably cynical ("I can take heroin, I'm old"). Uncle Frank is a depressed, gay, failed-suicide who is drifting through his life no longer caring about anything or anyone. And finally there's little Olive, who wants so desperately to be in the pageant, despite not being shallow enough, or indeed pretty enough.
The whole cast are outstanding  none of them can be faulted or accused of scene-stealing given that this is perhaps one of the best screen ensemble casts in memory. Olive (Beslin) gives an especially wonderful performance, particularly in the pageant talent competition at the end, so staggeringly inappropriate.
The film is also heart-stoppingly funny. From one-liners through choice background details and embarrassing episodes, there is something memorable to see in every frame, and the cast pull off all comedic timing with such skill one wonders how a film can be both this funny whilst also being so moving, bringing us to truly care about what is probably the most dysfunctional family seen on screen.
The film is mostly set on the road, and all the episodes that come from it, keeping nicely with the tradition of road movie (leaving people behind, vehicles breaking down, diner stops) whilst surpassing them all in humour and characterisation. The beauty pageant itself is, quite frankly, a scary satire on the lengths parents will go to fulfil their children's dreams. We see heavily made-up kids supporting bad fake tans and inappropriate clothing doing acts that mums think are sweet but are a paedophile's dream (we actually see one at the pageant, who is funnier than he has any right to be). The irony being that Olive's act is the height of what the pageant is trying to be, and manages to disgust all the parents who can't see beyond their own hypocrisy.
There's not a lot else to say about Little Miss Sunshine other than to say that in an ideal world it would be seen by everyone. It's a small film that manages to leap out of the big screen because it is so well constructed, through the laughs, the pace and the tone, that it is a near faultless comedy, and probably the best of 2006.
Rated: 9/10
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