A small movie on dysfunctional families running for Oscar

Rating: 8/10 (28 March 2007)

The Academy Award nominees for best picture of 2006 are as follows:
Babel The Departed Letters from Iwo Jima Little Miss Sunshine The Queen
And though I've seen and reviewed Eastwood's companion film to Iwo Jima, Flags of Our Fathers, the only movie I've seen on this list so far is LMS. My personal feeling is it's a good movieperhaps providing unique insights into how to resolve a dysfunctional familybut not big enough to win the Oscar.
The setup: we learn very quickly the nuclear family portion of the ensemble consists of a motivational speaker Pop (Greg Kinnear), his long-suffering wife Sheryl (Toni Collette), a seemingly psycho son Dwayne who reads Nietzsche and doesn't speak, and Olive (Abigail Breslin), the daughter innocently addicted to child beauty pageants.
Add to the mix Sheryl's gay brother Uncle Frank (Steve Carell)crashing with the family because he attempted suicide upon losing his job and being outedand heroin advocate-philosopher Grandpa (Alan Arkin) who offers his perspective to everyone having problems, especially his two grandkids.
The plot centers around the need to get Olive to a beauty pageant in California from New Mexico, where the strange family lives. They're scraping by, basically, and have to pile into a VW bus for the trip. It's a road pic and a good 'un.
Each of the characters is tantalizing complex, and they unfold during the journey through striking off one another. The root of the adventure is Olive's genuine motivation to be the best she can be in the context of beauty queenery. She's innocent of the contrivances that surround the pageant business.
The final scene with Olive's performance at the pageant strikes a blow for honesty and integrity... and genuine human feeling. It's quite an exhilarating climax, bringing to a head the other quiet stories of self-discovery....
For my complete review of this movie and for other movie and book reviews, please visit my site TheCoffeeCoaster.com.
Brian Wright Copyright 2007