dare say this out loud? It's OK to be a loser.

Rating: Null/10 (6 November 2010)

Little Miss Sunshine tells the story of a financially broken-up family, of which every member has a serious issue of his own to deal with, goes on a trip to enter their youngest child Olive into a beauty pageant. The story started off with uncle Frank (Steve Carell) trying to kill himself.Soon we learned he fell in love with a boy student and lost this love to his academic opponent who then also took his career title. We then follow this to look at other members in the family. Father Richard is an unsuccessful professor who,ironically, is obsessed with "being a winner" and boasts a self-developed "nine steps to success" and is now trying to sell it so they won't go broke. The older brother Dwayne is an antisocial teenager who hates everyone, wants to become a jet pilot and decides to not talk until that day came true. The grandpa,who was kicked out from an elder's home where he takes pride to, in his own words of wisdom to his grandson, "f*** not just one woman, A LOT OF THEM", and is now on drugs. In all, you see a family that couldn't get more problematic, and you see a lot of tension and anger and frustration in the air of the house. All of these negative emotion though(and this runs through out the film), contrasts and objects to the young girl Olive's dissolve to win Little Miss Sunshine and the entire family's care and support of such dissolve.
Some compromised will, some reluctant agreement, an abundant of arguing and yelling, and there we have the Hoover family on the road, in their half-to-dead VW bus.
And there goes the trip,unfolding more of each member's unfortunates. First on the line is Daddy's career going in trash, with no one buying his "nine steps" and leaving the family in potential bankruptcy. Then Uncle sees his former lover boy in grocer shop with his current lover all glowing and rich,and is seen by them sloppy with porn magazine. Then Brother finds out he is colorblind(too dramatic?) and will never be qualified to fly a jet. Lastly out of nowhere (although at this point you kind of see it coming) grandpa dies in his sleep which the family not only have to grieve but also, as if they haven't been unfavored enough by fate, find out that they'd have to steal his body out of the clinic to get back on the road. And they did.
At this point you'd figure all this bad luck would've at least traded for Olive's success in the contest—and even this isn't happening. Every girl in the contest is entirely prepped like copies of Britney Spears at best,Paris Histon at worst (lose the alcohol, drugs and jails but you get the idea) and is being justified by everyone for acting this way. The family tries to stop Olive from going on the stage but when She did get on that stage, she was more embarrassing than they thought: she went stripping, taught by Grandpa.
In the end there were no dramatic miracles for the family. Everyone lost in everything they started off doing or wanting to do, and got on that horning, push-up bus (oh I left out the bus's funny failure, well, you can see for it yourself) to head home. There was no answer declared for anyone's problems: how are they going to make ends meet, what is Dwayne going to do with his life, how is Uncle Frank going to start over, or is Olive ever going to be a winner. Nothing is said about anything, and yet we have one confirmed feeling about this family: they're now repaired and pulled together as they never have been, and ever will be.
That's the magic of this film: there's no far-fetched happy endings, not even a hint of one. Every single person was abandoned by their dream and would be, defined traditionally, exclusive losers. But we feel they in some other way they have not failed. They're happier, stronger, with the help of a true little Miss Sunshine.
It was BECAUSE they did not succeed at the goals they set out to reach, and because of what they went through to realize this fact, that at one point or another they found peace for themselves, and found out what they didn't know before that DOES NOT MATTER:to be a loser.
Because why should it? Are the goals we set for ourselves ultimate means to define who we are, and should be the reasons we give up on life once they're not realized? Or do we simply put too much gravity on things and meaninglize them to a point we MAKE ourselves feel we're losers all the time? WILL THE WORLD COME TO AN END AND WE STOP HAVING SIGNIFICANCE IF WE FAIL?
The answer is self-explanatory. It's not an answer this film points to your face, which is why it's not preachy or patronizing. You walk out of the cinema feeling uplifted and refreshed, you get the message it wants to deliver, and you feel as happy and thankful as this family does at the end of the film.
The casting was great, the directing and storytelling were, while not perfect, pretty nice to reckon with. Steve Carell again gives a very impressive performance. Greg Kinnear, Toni Colette, Alan Arkin all did very well with their characters. Abigail Breslin did not disappoint the audiences with her witty, innocent, praise-worthy act as Olive, although my recognition of her best performance still lies with Kit Kittredge. Paul Dano really surprised me with his part as Dwyane the brother whom he played so well with that accuracy of a depressed teenager, that I couldn't help relating him to a lot of teenagers I remember. In all, Little Miss Sunshine is a well written, well thought-out comedy drama that speaks of a comforting message.