A beauty!

Rating: 6/10 (24 January 2007)

"Little Miss Sunshine" is easily the most light-hearted dark comedy ever made and one of the best movies of 2006. Not only is it painfully funny, but it has an unexpected moral about the real difference between winners and losers.
The Hoover brood certainly appears to be the biggest bunch of losers you ever saw. Dad Richard (Greg Kinnear) is a pathetic, wannabe motivational speaker who has squandered the family's money on his idiotic program ("9 Steps to Success!"). Mom Sheryl (Toni Collette) tries to be the levelheaded voice of reason, but gets easily frazzled by all the chaos surrounding her. Son Dwayne (Paul Dano) is a teen aged misanthrope who has taken a vow of silence until he gets into a flight academy. Uncle Frank (Steve Carell) is a gay Proust scholar who has recently survived a suicide attempt. Grandpa (Alan Arkin) is a heroin addict with a heart of gold. Then there's little Olive (Abigail Breslin yay! A Hollywood child star who's NOT Dakota Fanning!), a sweet, bubbly ball of energy who has recently been chosen for the Little Miss Sunshine Beauty Pageant, thanks to dance training by good ol' Grandpa. This a triumph for Olive that spells financial hope for the Hoovers, so they load up their dilapidated, mustard yellow VW bus and head for Los Angeles.
Along the way they encounter all sorts of mishaps: the bus breaks down and has to pushed in order to start, the family quarrels, each family member is forced to face a cruel revelation about themselves, and tragedy even strikes. Yet Olive remains a positive presence, and being the glue that holds her family together falls on her little shoulders.
"Little Miss Sunshine" addresses a widely ignored fact: that there are two types of optimism. Richard represents the desperate, blind, phony optimism that infests the self-help section in any bookstore, where winning is the only representation of success, not the fact that you were bold enough to try in the first place. Richard also has a habit of speaking in a series of buzzwords and platitudes, such as "sarcasm is losers trying to bring winners down to their level". Here is a man who refuses to admit that he has any faults or insecurities, so he lashes out at people who are up front with their human frailties. In one of the most painful scenes in the movie, Olive innocently orders "waffles a la mode" at a diner, and Richard, thinking he's being helpful but in fact is being a jerk, lectures Olive on how "ice cream turns to fat", much to poor Olive and Sheryl's chagrin.
Olive, on the other hand, is real optimism personified. She believes in herself, keeps those bespectacled eyes on the prize, and dares to have faith when others seem doubtful. The Hoovers do indeed make it to the pageant, but I will NOT, under any circumstance, spoil the movie by revealing whether Olive wins or not. What I will say is this: win or lose, Olive is truly the most beautiful of her pint-size competitors.
The entire cast is just about perfect. Breslin is simply adorable, and she's the least annoying child actor to come along in ages. Collette is glorious as the world-weary but fiercely devoted Sheryl, who through even the most trying times stands by her family with a mother bear's ferocity. She also looks like a real, lower middle-class mom with her K-Mart wardrobe, love handles and boring hair. Carell was unfairly overlooked at Oscar time he nearly steals the movie as Frank, who slowly develops an "I'm a loser, but I'm okay" attitude. Frank is a passive, yet sardonic observer to all that's going on, and he becomes a surprising confidante to antisocial Dwayne. Carell also demonstrates his knack for physical comedy, creating Frank's ridiculous run that indicates someone who never got picked first for teams in gym class growing up. Arkin, Kinnear, and Dano are also good, making each of their characters sympathetic and all too real.
"Little Miss Sunshine" is really a beauty of a comedy. Don't miss it!