Not impressed

Rating: 5/10 (23 December 2006)

I'm a little confused as to why this movie has created so much praise amongst critic circles and has actually been able to make a birth on the top 250. Steve Carrell is a brilliant actor and I loved him on the Daily Show, The Office and in the 40 year-old virgin. Alan Arkin is dead on and I have no complaints with him. Greg Kinnear is an under-appreciated actor as is Toni Collette but none of those facts save this film. Carrell was underused in this movie and even when he was utilized, it wasn't very funny or emotionally gripping. This is a film that tries to engage us with it's imperfect yet human characters. The problem with that is, movies that attempt to do this have to have a firm foot set in reality. This movie employs too many farcical tactics that are neither funny nor believable (ex. the pervert cop, stealing the corpse, no one bothers to arrest or ticket the van that destroyed the parking lot swing arm to name a few). Furthermore, child pageantry is fairly uniform throughout the nation and how Albequerque is somehow out of the norm in the regard that a "clueless" contestant such as Olive could succeed is as ridiculous as her talent performance at the end of the movie. Why didn't her mother have any idea as to what's going on, she didn't see her perform in previous pageants or once see her rehearse at home? I'm not totally cold hearted and did enjoy some of the scenes where the family came together, like when they debated whether or not to let Olive perform, but those types of scenes were too far and few between. I really had high hopes going into this movie, I had heard that it was the feel good movie of the year. I guess it made me feel good to pick apart the incongruities of the script but that's not why I watch movies. Not impressed at all.