Relentlessly charming, thoroughly enjoyable

Rating: 8/10 (1 June 2007)

Of all the terrible ideas in the history of humankind the idea of beauty pageants for seven year old girls must be among the worst. Seeing little girls all tarted up to look like mini-whores is beyond unsettling, it's downright repulsive. Happily, Little Miss Sunshine, the film, takes the time to point out the stupidity and awfulness of Little Miss Sunshine, the pageant within the film. More happily, the film is really not about the pageant but rather about one little girl's journey as she and her rather odd family travel to the pageant. And what a charming, hilarious and ultimately uplifting journey it is.
The movie centers around young Olive, a refreshingly normal girl compared to the rest of the "beauty queens" on the pageants for third graders circuit. She gets the opportunity to compete in the Little Miss Sunshine pageant, which as you can see by her reaction when she finds out she gets to go, is apparently a really big deal. And here the hilarity begins as her family piles into their old VW bus for the journey from their home in New Mexico to the pageant in Redondo Beach, California. Suffice to say the trip does not go exactly according to plan. And with the motley crew that makes up this family there is no shortage of laughs. But in addition to all the laughs the film has so much charm and heart. It's a movie which certainly has its dark moments but in the end it's absolutely a feel-good story.
Now, about that family. Olive is the key, and in playing the role Abigail Breslin is simply amazing. You need not qualify it by saying it's a great performance for a child performer. It's a great performance, period. Breslin wonderfully captures all of Olive's varied emotions, and there are many on this journey. Whatever it is she has to get across at a given moment, Breslin does it. Saying she is amazing really doesn't do her justice, she's absolutely perfect. Hard to be better than perfect. Everyone around Breslin does a great job as well, certainly no casting missteps here. There's Greg Kinnear as Olive's father, a self-help guru who could use a lot of help himself, both in jump-starting his moribund career and in holding his family together. Toni Collette plays Olive's mother, the most seemingly normal one of the bunch and apparently the glue that barely does hold the family together. Paul Dano plays Olive's rather unhappy teenage brother Dwayne, who has taken a vow of silence until he realizes his dream of becoming an Air Force pilot. The hurt Dwayne feels shines through. Kudos to Dano for being able to say a lot without saying anything at all. Steve Carell is remarkably understated and quite good playing Olive's Uncle Frank, a gay, suicidal Proust scholar whose life is in tatters as the journey begins. And finally, Alan Arkin plays Olive's foul-mouthed, heroin-snorting Grandpa. If not for Breslin's brilliance, one could say Arkin steals the movie. As it is he's just one noteworthy piece in this brilliantly conceived puzzle.
Stick all these wonderfully varied characters in that beat-up VW bus for a couple of days and what you get is comic brilliance. You also get to see these incredibly different people come together to support one another through thick and thin. There's a lesson in this movie but Little Miss Sunshine doesn't beat you over the head with its lesson. It's much more subtle than that. After giving you plenty of laughs along the way it may only be when the film ends that you realize just how sweet and endearing the film was. This is one incredibly charming ride.