Misanthropic road trip with dysfunctional family substitutes derision for wit

Rating: 1/10 (23 January 2007)

Everyone I know and trust loved this movie and told me they howled with laughter. I simply do NOT get it. If you loved Borat and Napoleon Dynamite, you'll also love Little Miss Sunshine -- I suppose because they are both misanthropic comedies about stupid people. But even though I liked neither I will say that both had far better sight gags and funny albeit stupid lines than Little Miss Sunshine. Me, I really don't get the raves at all considering I think this is one of the 50 worst excuses for a movie I have ever seen.
I don't find stupid people doing stupid things especially funny. I find hip pot-shots at easy targets that have been the targets of other hip comedies in the past even less funny. This movie is devoid of the delicious irony, politically savvy subtext, witty lines, or wry observations that would make a satire satirical. A wasted Alan Arkin whose physical vibrancy belies his character's supposedly frail physical condition is embarrassing to watch as a male version of Sophia of the Golden Girls who then dies in much the same way as Imogene Coca in Vacation. The ensuing problems of what to do with the body also are more crass and derisive than funny. Greg Kinnear plays the father as a cross between Bert Convy's character in Semi-Tough and Harrison Ford's character in The Mosquito Coast -- an obsessed and self-destructive self-help guru. What a novel idea, showing a self-help guru who cannot help himself, much less others, but cannot see it. That's all the humor allowed his character with no funny lines or development or delicious irony to make him interesting. The fact that Kinnear is such a good actor that he keeps struggling to find humor makes it all the more tedious. Steve Correll is making a different movie than everyone else, playing his gay, suicidal brother character absolutely straight (pun intended). I'm not a fan, but he's very good and is the only character that doesn't give the viewer the impression that he knows he's playing an object-of-scorn and derision. Toni Colette and the girl playing Olive do salvage a few funny moments at the Beauty Contest itself. But, by then, it was too late for me to care about any of the characters.
It must be a generational thing. I am a 50-year old male who knows what I find funny and this certainly was not it!