Heartwarming madcap dysfunctional family caper

Rating: 9/10 (24 April 2007)

Albuquerque homemaker Sheryl (Toni Collette) has a few problems, causing her some stress, leading to nicotine addiction. ("I am NOT smoking!")
First, there is Richard (Greg Kinnear) her husband, who is an annoying and uninspired motivation speaker who thinks he's going to get rich hustling his nine-step pyramid to success. Loser!
Then there is her brother Frank (Steve Carell) who has bandages on his wrists after trying to kill himself because his homosexual lover (one of his grad students) dumped him, the number one American authority on Marcel Proust, for his academic rival, the number two authority. Pathetic!
Next there is Grandpa (Alan Arkin) a randy nursing home reject who snorts heroin, has a potty mouth and complains a lot. (Maybe he'll overdose!)
Then there is her teenaged son Dwayne an antisocial loner who reads Nietzsche, hates everyone, and is on a vow of silence until he gets into flight training in the Air Force. (Our children always disappoint us. Sometimes we forgive them.)
And finally there is Miss Sunshine herself, her daughter Olive (Abigail Breslin) a little overweight, a little nerdy, not exactly a looker, who has entered the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant for little girls and is honing her dance routine following the pornographic advice of Grandpa. Oh, boy!
Credit Michael Arndt whose script won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for this lineup and for a wonderful and strikingly original comedic and satirical romp through dysfunctional land. For reasons too complex to relate, the whole family piles into the Volkswagen bus and heads for Redondo Beach, California where the beauty pageant is being held. Along the madcap way, the bus's clutch goes out, Grandpa suffers, shall we say, a major setback, Richard learns that the family finances are not going to work out, Frank gets the heartbreak rubbed in his face, and Dwayne finds out that his dream is not going to come true. But can Olive win the pageant?
The pageant itself is pretty funny with the girls in their plastic hairdos and their Tammy Faye makeup and their fake smiles pitted against the decidedly unglamourous but ever hopeful Olive Hoover. Who will win?
Alan Arkin won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, and Abigail Breslin and the picture itself garnered Oscar nominations. But see this for the writer. Michael Arndt's warm, funny and highly original script has me (and half the screenwriters in Hollywood and New York) green with envy.
(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)