Grandpa's in the trunk.

Rating: 10/10 (27 December 2011)

Little Miss Sunshine? Ycccchhh! Who wants to watch a movie about a child beauty pageant? It took me awhile to get up the nerve to.
Don't worry, the pageant is only a small part of the movie. Perhaps a better title would have been "Grandpa's Revenge." Abigail Breslin doesn't deliver a bravura performance. But she nails the role by keeping it simple and natural, avoiding "acting" in the Hitchcock sense. This kid is the only sane one in the bunch, but then that is the right of being pre-teen. When you see the kids in the pageant, you see that their parents have taken this sanctuary from adulthood away from them.
Greg Kinnear, with his pretty boy looks, is perfect in the role of over-confident self-help guru. He has done some fine work in other movies, but this is one of his best roles.
What I love about this movie is its fairly naturalistic acting, appearing at times almost like a reality TV show about an average neurotic American family.
It seems different people take away different things from this movie. The producers weave many levels of meaning into the story, effortlessly. In this, and in its natural style, it reminds me of Breaking Away. I think Sunshine, too, is destined to becoming something of a cult classic in the coming decades.
I also couldn't help but think of The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man in the Moon Marigolds, which also featured a pretty little daughter who was innocently oblivious to the neurotic family around her.
But perhaps most of all, this is a deliciously absurd comedy embedded in the movie's noir realism. The comedy works so well because it grows out of the movie's disjointed situations, rather than gags. Just thinking back on some of the scenes makes me laugh.
And for those of you who don't really know Alan Arkin, he is one of the greatest comedy actors of his era. I saw some of his early improv movie shorts that were just wonderful.
OK, it took me awhile to watch Little Miss Sunshine. If you haven't seen it, don't wait so long.