After 'Crank' (below), Little Miss Sunshine is exactly that - a warm ray to restore your faith that there is someone up there making positive, life-affirming films.
The blue-collar Hoover family of misfits take their daughter from Alberquerque to California to perform in the Little Miss Sunshine contest, and learn more about themselves and each other on the journey.
Although pitched as an indie film, the cast has a solid A-list of actors, rather than stars. led by frazzled mum Sheryl Toni Collette, who has yet to turn in a bad performance in a film, whether playing Aussies (Muriel's Wedding), Americans (The Sixth Sense) or Brits (About a Boy). Then there's dad Richard (Greg Kinnear), who believes he's struck gold to market his shonky nine-step positive thinking programme. Sulky big brother Dwayne hasn't spoken for nine months, but perfers to communicate through scribbled messages such as 'I HATE EVERYONE'.
Meanwhile Granpa Edwin (Alan Arkin) is quite content to see out his days smoking heroin and cursing like a trooper to anyone who tries to cross his path. That means on-the-brink depressive brother Frank (Steve Farell), who is left under his big sister Sheryl's supervision. And of course the family is completed by Little Miss Sunshine Olive herself.
What follows on their journey is a series of mishaps, disasters and general bottoming out for everyone in the custard yellow VW Camper van they ride in, which is as temperamental as the rest of them. Directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Farris frame the whole trip very matter of fact with natural direction and long pauses, showing us Arizonan gas stations, the LA fringes and Californian costal concrete intersections with the same love and affection. In all but a couple of scenes they keep what could have been a nudge-wink farce or engineered tearjerker into a piercing thoughtful image of a very unnormal, normal family learning to rub along together and appreciate the little things in life.
No comments:
Post a Comment