Better than my first impression.

Rating: 10/10 (28 January 2007)

When I first saw the previews to this film, I thought it was going to be a pain by the way the family was bickering in the beginning. However when I saw this film, it exceeded my expectations by far.
Here come the spoilers, watch out.
Dwayne's philosophical point that life is a beauty pageant surfaces toward the end. This changes the tone of the film, considering after seeing everything the family went through and seeing their quirks that make them different from society.
The rest of the family was depressed and angry, while Olive was still pure to the world around her. Dwayne, like any good brother, tries to stop Olive from competing, thinking the pageant will ruin her healthy psyche. However Olive proceeds and beats the system of the beauty pageant. All the other girls looked like little Stepford wives. Instead of sheepishly trying to be the same as them, she remained pure to her natural self.
A professor once told me a good quote - "There is a thin swimsuit between a porn star and a beauty queen." In a way, these pageants make the little girls sleazy in the sense that they are trying to mature too quickly sexually. Olive brings out this point in her dance, whether she realized it or not. It's as if the grandfather's spirit was saying, "Is this what you want? This is what a beauty contest truly is. There!" In her strip dance, she was more bodily covered than the other girls.
The end was so important, because it brought the family together. Olive won without winning. The song Super Freak, although it is a sex related song, holds a different meaning in this scene. It was a way of saying she is a freak and she is proud of it. The family jumps onto stage, one by one. Frank, the one who was clinically depressed in the beginning, is now jumping around happily. Dwayne realizes realizes there is a way to beat the contests of life and joins. Everyone is dancing in a circle, proud of who they are, and proud of their daughter. They are a family of superfreaks, and they accepted themselves and each other.