"Little Miss Sunshine" (2006) - Movie Review

There are six out of normal characters and they are packed in a same bus. They are honest and true to their values that they make each other go crazy. Despite their differences, they all unite to support their sweet little kid in their family for a beauty pageant. “Little Miss Sunshine”, directed by the couple Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris is a story of the members of an unusual family who take on a road trip from New Mexico to California in order to make her family kid, Olive to participate in a beauty pageant. The movie has been nominated for four Academy Awards including “Best Picture” category.

Sheryl Hoover (Toni Collette) goes to hospital to get his brother, Frank (Steve Carell) who just managed to survive of a suicide attempt. Sheryl’s husband, Richard (Greg Kinear) is desperately hoping for his motivational step-by-step to success implementing in his own day to day life with rigorous solemn tortures. Dwayne (Paul Dano) is son of Sheryl, who has taken the “vow of silence” in order to achieve his dream of becoming the test pilot. Richard’s dad, Edwin (Alan Arkin) finds peace in training his grand daughter Olive (Abigail Breslin) for beauty pageant and taking heroin. Their journey from New Mexico to California opens up the spectrum of emotions in everyone with minuscule incidents to the final grandeur of the pageant itself.

The movie while maybe mistaken for a wedding of “Midnight Run” with “American Beauty” does have the subtle relationship getting build up on abnormal quarrels. With a proper small introduction of the characters, the movie jumps in the bus to make the viewer explore their way of handling things in an entertaining and emotional manner. When all the chaos happens, they try to contribute their two cents of unselfish human side for the girl they love. The interesting part about the movie is how the misery of characters somehow tickles us and makes the viewer feel guilty about it in a second. When Frank is so shy to show his failure and bizarre purchases at the gas station when his lost love comes past him, while the viewer gets tickled, his emotions being shattered and rambled upon over a feeling he is been looked down for judgmental reasons.

Greg Kinear’s portray of Richard as the irritatingly go-getter sometimes walks on the line of clay model character and being natural. Yet he comes out clean and cool as a cucumber in the end. As for Alan Arkin as the bad mouthing grandpa with transparent layers of words of wisdom is truthfully entertaining. Steve Carell and Paul Dano maintain the chemistry in between the characters that it takes a brief two minute conversation for them to convey what they have to. Toni Collette and Abigail Breslin cuddle each other with their love in a typical mother-daughter relationship.

The movie projecting itself as a comedy is more of soul search among the viewers themselves. The story while acupunctures with strong needles at the most untouched and fragile places, it continuously drive the factor of comedy all along the way. The viewer may aimlessly look for a sharp twist in the movie even though aware of the nature of it; the blandness does interestingly bring out its own form of flavour in to this piece. The rash decisions may be strange but the family is known for their strangeness and nevertheless there lays their own way of reasoning with each other. End of the day, there will always be people judging everyone for the very brief time they see, but is it really worth to change it for them? Is it really worth to alter the whole notion of anyone’s thought for that matter? “Little Miss Sunshine” is not about a small kid trying to get some winner title in a beauty contest, rather it is the way world works around. When there are millions of third persons’ trying to prejudice themselves into shutting themselves up into knowing a blossoming learning character, there will always be the family of one without any of those to accept for their originality. The movie brings out the untold and the silent communication shared in between Dwayne and his step sister Olive. While he sheds away everyone, her simple presence makes his frustration take a back seat and make her happy.

The husband-wife combination brought out the best in themselves with bright yellow painted art, “Little Miss Sunshine”. The direction is intact and never falters its way out of the theme of interesting blandness. While the editing helps the theme hold on to it, it is the music which adds on its right tingly tunes to set the emotions straight and moody. “Little Miss Sunshine” is the movie which needs to be taken for its very subtle and hard content of prejudices and judgments, success and failure, life and death and to identify the “winner” out of the “loser” in themselves.