Who are these people?

Rating: 8/10 (11 February 2007)

who exactly are the strange people in the movie?
This is the question I asked myself continuously as I watched Little Miss Sunshine, and it was only at the end of the film that I was able to answer it.
Following a last minute road trip in a VW van with a children's beauty pageant as a destination, the film revolves around the family of the child-star who is trying to audition, Olive.
Played by Abigail Breslin, trained by her heroine addicted Grandfather with little ability to self-censor, needs to make it to a beauty pageant as a last minute spot becomes available in the line-up.
Alan Arkin delivers excellently as the Grandfather, with withering commentary and perverse logic backed up with such dominating personality that no-one is really able to argue with his strange points of view.
Steve Carell is also quietly brilliant as Frank, the suicidal gay uncle academic who is only joining the family so they can keep up the death-watch, and Paul Dano does a good job as the troubled teen brother. Kinnear and Collette perform well as the 9-steps-to-success obsessed father and the desperate mother.
Faced with the internal and external struggles of this lot, its no wonder that one asks, who are these people? Well, folks be the end of the movie, in what has to be the creepiest example of cinema verite I have possibly ever scene. My skin crawled at the skeevy-ness of all the beauty pageant scenes, especially the announcer, who, quite frankly, made my blood run cold. As it turns out, every one of the contestants, save Olive, was an real pageant winner, in costume and performing the same talent routine as their winning pageant. This only makes it that much worse, I assure you.
So it turns out that the people in the van are the normal ones, just like you me and our Grandfathers, and the people at the pageant are the ones we have to worry about.
It's a clean win for the everyman.
I can't help but give this one a Must See, even if you don't feel like it tonight...