Bittersweet funny ensemble road movie

Rating: 8/10 (7 November 2006)

America is a country obsessed with success. The constant desire to be number one, the best of the best is what fuels the national image. It is a world of constant competition where everybody wants to be a winner, or in the words of Nietzsche obsessed teen Dwayne, "life is one f**king beauty contest after another". Little Miss Sunshine gives us the Hoover family, the embodiment of the disappointment that comes from chasing this American Dream of success but ultimately failing on every level. The obsession with winning permeates all through the film, from minor details like the rossettes pinned to the Hoover's pinboard and their relatives inability to take Olive to the beauty pageant because their horses are competing in "nationals" through to each character's desire to be the best. Motivational speaker Richard (Greg Kinnear) is desperate to spread his message of not being a loser, of bringing out the winner within to the extent that he constantly pushes this on his family even while he is clearly himself a loser in his inability to sell his ideas. Uncle Frank defines himself as being the country's preeminent Proust scholar and when his rival is given a genius grant above him, it drives him to attempt suicide. Meanwhile, little Olive is only able to enter the Little Miss Sunshine pageant as runner up in her regional competition after the winner was disqualified. This is a family who come off worse in everything they try and that is what makes them likable losers in this weird success obsessed America. As Tolstoy said "all happy families are alike, unhappy families are unhappy in different ways." Of course, there are no greater clichés in American independent cinema than the dysfunctional family and the road movie and Little Miss Sunshine doesn't escape from falling into a lot of these. The scenes of the van breaking down are funny but we've been there so many times before. However, it is an expertly made film which is more bitter than bittersweet up until the hilarious and genuinely heartwarming finale at the Little Miss Sunshine pageant itself, a sort of grotesque parody of adult beauty pageants (the smarmy MC of the show is particularly bad) and an event so weird and disturbing it's hard to believe it actually exists. Music video directors Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton give the film a bright but faded colour scheme that seems to reflect the character's high ambitions and their failures. In particular there is a strong recurring usage of yellow, from the Hoover's falling apart VW van to Dwayne's "Jesus Was Wrong" T-shirt. What really lifts this picture above the pack, though, is the performances and the genuinely touching relationships that develop between these disparate characters who individually may seem clichéd dysfunctional family archetypes. Much of the laughs early on are generated by Alan Arkin's foul mouthed, drug taking grandpa but his mentoring and coaching of Olive is as touching as it is strange. Similarly, the way Frank's relationship with mute Dwayne gives them both someone to understand them is well done with the "high school's your prime suffering years" speech particularly affecting. Steve Carell excels in his role as the gay, suicidal Proust expert, displaying a talent for deadpan sarcasm and a genuine sense of suffering and depression untapped in his previous performances in Anchorman and Bruce Almighty. Special praise must also be given for young Abigail Breslin as Olive, the cheerfully optimistic yet insecure girl with the enormous glasses whose unlikely dream holds the whole family together. Resting such a weight of the movie on the shoulders of a child is often a big mistake but Breslin is adorably cute but also gives a surprisingly subtle performance with an impressive range. She brings out the best in the other characters, the ice cream in the diner scene being particularly good. It is undoubtedly one of the best child acting performances in a long time. While not being anything particularly new, Little Miss Sunshine is an entertaining, funny and well performed little picture about being one of life's losers and will certainly brighten up your day to see it. ****