Fox Studios

Little Miss Sunshine

Here comes the fun
by Sam Turnbull

Little Miss Sunshine stands out due to a talented cast and unique story line

Little Miss Sunshine puts the fun back in family dysfunction.

The film is as unpretentious as it is humorous.  A cast of strongly developed characters interact flawlessly.  The best part is they don’t realize how funny they are.

Cast
Steve Carell, breaking away from his typical role as the funny guy plays the suicidal uncle the family has been unhappily charged with taking care of.

Abigail Breslin shines in her role as Olive, the unflinching positive force that brings out everything that is right about her family.

Paul Dano as Dwayne, Olive’s brother, and Alan Arkin as grandpa fill in the rest of the cast.

Dwayne and Grandpa are about as different as two men can be.  Dwayne is the brooding teenager who hates everyone and has taken a vow of silence as much to avoid interacting with his family as anything. 

Grandpa is the most outspoken and raw character in this eclectic crew.  He is not hesitant to discuss his sexual endeavors or his heroin addiction with anyone who will listen.

Plot
Little Miss Sunshine opens on a struggling Albuquerque family.  Mom, Toni Collette, and dad, Greg Kinnear, are on the verge of divorce, pushed too far by severe financial problems. The family has been getting along by spending as little time around each other as possible, but fate would not allow that comfortable condition to continue.

Olive, who recently took runner-up in a beauty pageant in California, receives the call that the winner has been disqualified and Olive has consequently become the winner. This news brings Olive no end of joy, and it becomes as clear to the audience as it is to her parents that it’s essential that Olive compete in the next round of the pageant, i.e. the Little Miss Sunshine Contest.

The entire family is thus thrown into a VW bus, and forced to drive the 800 miles to California. In the bus the entire plot unfolds.  The majority of the film consists of different characters talking in the bus. This is strangely exactly how the movie should be.  The dialogue is so strong that the characters doing more would only distract. On this two-day road trip from hell hearts are broken, hurts are healed and one of the characters is forever lost.

Midway to California Olive’s parents realize they are on the verge of complete bankruptcy, and the fragility of their marriage becomes exceedingly clear. Despite at least three instances after which there appeared to be no chance of the family continuing on their cross-state journey, they pushed on.

Eventually they do reach the Little Miss Sunshine Pageant.  At the contest each of the characters’ true feelings are at last clear to the audience.  They all love Olive — a lot.

The film culminates as it will be remembered, with hilarity, but that sense of heart is never lost.