Beautiful losers indeed!

Rating: 10/10 (25 July 2006)

I just came out of a packed house preview here in Montreal with a buddy of mine and like *W*O*W*! Were we ever surprised! Not only did the house literally come down with the amount of laughter coming out of the audience, but I kid you not, every single person who walked out after wards had a wistful but goofy smile plastered across their face.
First off, this cast was superb all round. It goes without saying that Toni Collette, Greg Kinnear and Alan Arkin are all talented - we already know that given their respective bodies of work. Thank heavens that Dakota Fanning wasn't cast as Olive and I hope Abigail Breslin starts to put a dent in Dakota's career from now on. This little girl really has some serious acting chops and testament to that was her ability to be absolutely sweet and insecure at the same time without looking wide-eyed, spacey and screaming all the time. Steve Carell was another revelation, we already know what a talented comedian he is but who would have guessed this guy can also do serious acting? In the beginning he is an extremely tortured soul, life has thrown him enough knocks in a relatively short amount of time where he is literally at the brink of losing it. His embarrassment at facing a lost love, his shame and his pain are all very, very palpable, more so because in some ways we've all been there. This isn't Shakespearian tragedy on a mythic scale, this is the wear and tear of everyday, commonplace loss we have all to some degree felt. He really brought a level of humanity to his role, something we barely see in Hollywood anymore. Another name to keep a look out for the future is Paul Dano, who play's Dwayne, the Nietzche-reading angst-ridden goth teen-aged older brother who has taken a vow of silence until that time he is accepted to become an Air Force pilot. Literally without saying a word for 80% of this film, he was able to express the magnitude of his disgust at his family, his situation and ultimately himself with nothing more than body language, facial expressions and pure presence. His scene where he discovers the reality of his situation was easily the most intense in the film and one of the most honest and emotionally painful to watch.
In many ways, this movie is about beautiful losers, one by one as each main character faces loss and needs to deal with the reality of lost dreams and hopes, they start to place their hopes and wishes on Olive and the Little Miss Sunshine pageant in Redondo Beach, California. What you also realize is underneath this picture of a completely dysfunctional family and the personal "issues" each individual carries, beneath it all, every person in this family ultimately has a lot of love for one another especially for Olive. Once they realize that they're not going to get what they want, they take that hope and drive and give it to Olive unselfishly.
The film is also a literal and symbolic meditation on journeys - yeah, they're on a road trip from Arizona to California and some of the scenes were indeed shot beautifully but it's also about how members of this family also had to journey far inside themselves to help Olive in this one crazy weekend. It is also an indictment on the culture of fierce competition which we are all living in, winning at all costs and the insanity of how these ideas are already, insidiously affecting children from the get-go. Watching some of the kids in the beauty pageant alone was sickening. In some ways, it shows that it's not competition which is always the best thing but cooperation can do the job just as well minus the neuroses and emotional damage.
Did I also mention how hilarious this film is? I won't give away the ending but please do your best to make this the sleeper hit of 2006. You won't regret it.
In conclusion, a deeply-satisfying film experience.