How unfortunate that Little Miss Sunshine contains bad language and sex content. If I had a daughter I can’t think of a non-Miyazaki movie I’d rather take her to. This is not a family film, and I do not recommend allowing children to see it without supervision (I do not recommend children under eight see it at all), but that said, I think viewing this film at a young age would cause far less psychological damage than, say, watching Snow White, or Sleeping Beauty, or anything starring Barbie. While I’d love to believe the fervour with which this movie objectifies its seven- and eight-year-old “models” at the titular beauty pageant is exaggerated, it probably isn’t. And happily, the movie (written by first-timer Michael Arndt and directed by husband-and-wife team Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris) is as disgusted by it as we are.

Little Miss Sunshine, despite the title, has the darkest of setups. The scholar Frank, played by Steve Carell and a beard, has been through a rough patch and tries to kill himself. The authorities contact his sister, Sheryl (Toni Collette), and he’s sent to live with her family, which includes one of those fathers who can’t do anything without consulting Seven Habits of Highly Effective People or one of its knockoffs (Greg Kinnear), a son who upon discovering Nietzsche hasn’t spoken in nine months (relative newcomer Paul Dano), a horny grandfather (Alan Arkin; “Get me some porn,” he says to Frank at one point in the movie. “And make sure it’s real dirty stuff too, none of that airbrushed shit”), and seven-year-old Olive (the daughter in Signs, Abigail Breslin), who recently placed runner-up in a local beauty pageant. No sooner does Frank arrive than she’s informed the winner had to give up her crown – allowing her to compete in the Little Miss Sunshine competition. The family piles into a Volkswagen minibus and prepares to make its way from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to California.

And so begins an ensemble comedy that reminded me very much of the films of Alexander Payne. Like About Schmidt and Sideways, Little Miss Sunshine revels in the flawed, the pointless, the bizarre – because, after all, that’s the part of life that makes it worth living. It does not believe in glamourizing our existence, or dividing us into “winners” and “losers;” it knows that everyone involved can make a difference, and if it doesn’t spread beyond the family, that’s all right. And how wonderful it would be if real seven-year-old beauty pageant contestants (or anyone of a young age who thinks that outward beauty – defined by stick-thin figures and swimsuits that show off the roundness of your thighs – is all that matters) could see this film, and have it laid out for them just how insane our beauty-obsessed culture can be (at one point Kinnear’s character advises Olive not to eat her ice cream because it will make her fat – thankfully by the end of the scene the others have turned her around).

It’s an odd journey, and it won’t make friends with every critic (I can see it now: “The movie establishes Steve Carell as the protagonist but then gradually forgets about him.”), but it’s consistent, and the acting is terrific. It spans 800 miles and two days, gives at least one important scene to each of the family members, packs in a few solid laughs and the occasional life lesson while remaining true to the characters, and finishes up with a finale so jawdroppingly ludicrous, it would sink the movie if the directors didn’t already realize it was so ridiculous.

And that’s where my review will end. To say more about Little Miss Sunshine would spoil the movie’s unpredictable predictability, which turns out to be its stock in trade. It sorta goes where you’d expect a road movie to, but not quite.

I will say I think one of the surprises was a little too far out of left field. And that I would have liked some more closure with Carell’s character; the film may be an ensemble piece, but it started out focusing on him, after all.

4*






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