Little Miss Sunshine

Written at the time of the film's release (mostly), but the reason there's not much here is because I didn't think much of it...or about it. I have expanded it somewhat today, but not for the betterment of my opinion of it. It's here because the directing duo's Battle of the Sexes is going to be written about later in the week.

Little Miss Sunshine (Valerie Faris, Jonathan Dayton, 2006) "Oh my God, I'm being pulled over! Everybody just pretend to be normal!" 

That's it, right there, summing it up in a nutshell...or a beat-up Volkswagon micro-bus designed for road-trippiness and cowded dysfunction.. 

Little Miss Sunshine fulfills all the traditions of the "indie" film (eccentric characters—✓. Road trip—✓. Pervasive streak of dark humor—✓), and has a terrific cast who manage to play it in a fairly fresh manner (Alan Arkin is always worth seeing—even in "obscene old grampa with no filters" mode, plus there's Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, Paul Dano, and utility player Steve Carell, plus the "cute-as-a-button Abigail Breslin, who's there to make the audience go *Awww* and to impart some anticipated wisom and perspective to to her up-generational collection of odd-balls). There is some terrifically off-hand writing which is the only reason the various outcomes of the story aren't immediately telegraphed once each character is introduced. It's a fine diversion, but one has to ask--"Best Picture nominee? Really? Really?"

Are we having fun yet?

The first line of the thing is: "There are two kinds of people in the world: winners and losers." No. Not true. There ARE two kinds of people in this world and they are 1) those who categorize people and 2) those who do not, taking people one person at a time, acknowledging their personal strengths and failings. The first kind (1) categorize because it is a handy work-tool designed to simplify one's job if they are A) lazy or B) trying to codify something that would be uncodifiable if they went by a person's individuality. The categorizers turn people into numbers, statistics, and check-boxes, designed to embrace a kind of mob-rule of behavior dictated by age, sex, race, religion, political affiliation, or anything else that you could segregate in neat, dividable terms. The fact that the speaker of that first line is a motivational speaker with very little motivation himself, and whose family does not fit into any easy categorization speaks volumes. In fact, you could end the movie there and bring up a card that reads "Dysfunction ensues."

Life is messy. Life can't be categorized. And the micro-bus of fools displayed are people in transition without a clear understanding of what appears over the horizon. They are all, at least in the stage we find them, surviving (barely) on hope. And each one's hope  drives a wedge between interaction that might solve anybody's problem. They learn that lesson. That's the movie.

The saving graces are the performances by one and all, and some arresting writing along the way. But, the only way this "feel-good" comedy can make you feel good is by knowing that "at least you're not them."