Sad Comedy

Rating: 8/10 (14 January 2007)

Little Miss Sunshine is a funny and entertaining independent movie about a strange and ambitious family called the Hoovers who take a road-trip. Their 7-year year old daughter Olive (Abigail Breslin) enters the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant in California. The Hoovers can't afford to fly so they drive an old VW bus from their home in Albuquerque.
The Hoovers are a family with big dreams who seem to lack the talent or ability to realize them. Richard (Greg Kinnear) plays the dad, a motivational speaker who specializes in telling people how to become winners. Sheryl (Toni Collette) is the mother, who tries to make sure everybody is happy, but is becoming disillusioned with her husband's lack of success. Her brother Frank (Steve Carrell) is recovering from a suicide attempt. Frank is a gay, Proust scholar who believes he is the leading U.S. expert in his field. His boyfriend has just left him for a more successful rival. The teenage son Dwayne (Paul Dano) reads Nietzsche, and wants to become a jet pilot. He has not spoken for nine months and communicates by writing notes. Richard's father (Alan Arkin) recently got kicked out of his retirement community for swearing and snorting heroin. When Grandpa dies he is thrown in the trunk. Olive is a short, overweight little girl whose beauty queen ambitions are at odds with her physique.
The Hoovers start the movie unable to communicate with each other. Their VW has a broken clutch and to get the vehicle going they have to push and leap into the moving van. Somehow the absurdity of their situation helps bring them together. Once in California the Little Miss Sunshine competition seems like a grotesque freak show. Underage girls perform adult dance moves and look and dress like drag queens. Olive performs an unfortunate dance routine choreographed by her Grandpa. The Hoovers are appalled by the misguided dedication and professionalism surrounding the competition.
Most family members end the movie with their hopes and dreams crushed. After sharing numerous humiliations they learn to bond and realize they at least have each other. The smart and witty script by Michael Arndt seems to pose a number of questions about the destructive power of ambition for those with no talent. You conclude the Hoovers might be better off if they tried to just live ordinary lives without the striving to be winners.
The movie has a talented cast and Carrell gives a memorable impression of a gay man running for a bus. By the end of the film you care about the Hoovers and although they seem happy, you worry about what will become of them. The film was directed by the husband-and-wife team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris who do a remarkable job on a production budget of $8 million.