Little Miss Where-the-shine-don't-shine

Rating: 1/10 (21 March 2011)

Once a film like this would not have been made. Then it would have been made cheaply and had a cult following. Now this drek is so mainstream it wins an Oscar. The debasement of taste is now complete, although I guess we'll see worse.
I had never heard of film until my lodger told me he had been told it was very funny. Checking the brief TV review, I became aware that Alan Arkin had won an Oscar and the announcer before the start declared it had a wonderful script.
Surely this was a treat not to be missed!
The opening sequence did not seem to promise much with its series of misanthropic and narcissistic characters. A boy who refuses to speak and communicates via writing is a poor cinematic effect since the action always has to stop for him to write down. Alan Arkin appears with some foul mouthed whining. Surely this would improve.
The next outburst from Arkin is in the back of the van advocating underage sex in the crudest terms to the mute boy in the full presence of the family. This does not raise any questions about his suitability to spend the night alone in the same room as the girl (who is present at the time although conveniently doesn't hear) from any family member. Not even Steve Carroll though he is required to buy some hardcore porn for the old man to use.
At this point out of the blue my lodger said to me "Who ever described this as a comedy should be sued under the trades description act." Little did we both know that this was the comical highlight of the film.
Then Arkin died suddenly. Myself and my lodger looked at each other. Surely such an unpleasant incident was out of place in what I thought would be a fairly light comedy. We both speculated that maybe he wasn't really dead and a moment of comic relief would arise. But no. Arkin had won his Oscar for a crude walk-on consisting of only a few lines.
That not many tears were shed for this old horndog shows the lack of sympathy shown in this "wonderful" script. Instead he becomes a cheap (and disposable) comedy prop for some inept sequences which we've all seen before done before (Fawlty Towers has a great show around getting rid of a corpse, but that corpse is not related to anyone which would make it too tasteless).
By now, I was not only not laughing (nor was my lodger) but rather depressed. But such was the reputation of this film I'd received that I felt I had to watch it to the end. It must improve.
After one crushing of dreams after another by all family members culminating in its notorious and shallow finale, I was stunned. But the true awful of this film and its sickening subtext only really hit me when I thought about it later.
0/10