![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Little Miss Sunshine
Jan. 10th, 2007 08:39 amOnce again, Netflix allowed me to see a movie that I had wanted to see in the theater but was unable to do so. Loved it, but then I expected to. :-)
Hard movie to try to pitch to your friends. One might discribe it as a comedy in which a dysfunctional family goes on a road trip that ends at child beauty pagent. But I don't think the family is dsyfunctional. It has problems -- comic/trajic problems -- but in their own ways they are all just trying to get by and get to their dream goals. These people come across as real, and it is our connection with them that makes the movie funny. Except for the end, where I was laughing so hard I scared my cats, the "funny" in this movie is of the quiet, sly variety.
This is another one of those tiny budget/short shoot schedual numbers that works spectacuarly because it has a great cast. The little girl is perfect. Steve Carrel, as the wife's Proust-scholar Proust scholar brother that has to go along because he is on a suicide watch. Alan Arkin is the grandfather with definate ideas about things, Greg Kinner is the dad who is trying to sell his 9-step motivational plan, Paul Dino is the teenage boy who, inspired by Neitzche, as taken a vow of silence until he can get into flight school, Toni Collett is the mom who is trying to keep it all together, and Abigal Breslin is the little girl with big dreams of becoming Little Miss Sunshine. Throw all these folks in a VW Van with a broken clutch and that's your movie. Brilliant.
I thought the review by Ruth Stein at SFGate summed it up well:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/08/04/DDGQVKA2TU1.DTL
Glad to hear that this little movie has begun to be nominated for awards -- restores one's faith in the world.
Hard movie to try to pitch to your friends. One might discribe it as a comedy in which a dysfunctional family goes on a road trip that ends at child beauty pagent. But I don't think the family is dsyfunctional. It has problems -- comic/trajic problems -- but in their own ways they are all just trying to get by and get to their dream goals. These people come across as real, and it is our connection with them that makes the movie funny. Except for the end, where I was laughing so hard I scared my cats, the "funny" in this movie is of the quiet, sly variety.
This is another one of those tiny budget/short shoot schedual numbers that works spectacuarly because it has a great cast. The little girl is perfect. Steve Carrel, as the wife's Proust-scholar Proust scholar brother that has to go along because he is on a suicide watch. Alan Arkin is the grandfather with definate ideas about things, Greg Kinner is the dad who is trying to sell his 9-step motivational plan, Paul Dino is the teenage boy who, inspired by Neitzche, as taken a vow of silence until he can get into flight school, Toni Collett is the mom who is trying to keep it all together, and Abigal Breslin is the little girl with big dreams of becoming Little Miss Sunshine. Throw all these folks in a VW Van with a broken clutch and that's your movie. Brilliant.
I thought the review by Ruth Stein at SFGate summed it up well:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/08/04/DDGQVKA2TU1.DTL
Glad to hear that this little movie has begun to be nominated for awards -- restores one's faith in the world.
