LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE
(2006, dir. Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris)
If you live in NY or LA guess what you're doing this weekend? You're going to see Little Miss Sunshine. Why? Because it's fucking adorable. It's sweet without being sappy. The script achieves a balanced sad/funny attitude without being cloying. The performances are all stellar from actors who are usually so underused. People in the audience at the screening I attended were cheering. CHEERING! At like some moment of dialogue. Not at some action sequence. I don't know if I can stress this enough, people were CHEERING... on a weekday... at dialogue... Despite my hatred for "Sundance Favorites" I have to admit that this comedy directed by a husband-wife team was great.
This movie is about a New Mexico family who take a road trip to Redondo Beach so that the youngest member, Olive, can participate in a junior beauty pageant. Yeah I know. I heard road trip and beauty pageant in the same sentence and threw up in my mouth a little bit. But I found that this film was refreshingly disengaged from its own quirkiness. The turn-offs of Napolean Dynamite and Garden State were that they were written by their directors. These would-be auteurs fancied that any bizarre concept that sprung into their pretty little minds was a fucking nugget of genius (silent velcro, tots, etc.). Thankfully, Little Miss Sunshine, has some mildly amusing ticks (mute-by-choice teenager, heroin-snorting grandfather) but the directors actually DIRECT those choices toward their logical purpose.
THEY ACTUALLY FUEL THE GODDAMN STORY!
For example, one of my biggest problems with Garden State is that Natalie Portman's character is epileptic but that it was introduced as this weird quirk her character had (like her past as an ice skating bear or whatever) and then it never fed into the narrative. Now if you were doing a documentary on twenty-somethings living in NJ and one of them happens to be epileptic then I wouldn't think much of it. If you're crafting a story and your name is Zach Braff and you're on Scrubs making your directorial debut in a highly touted feature, it seems so pointless to introduce a characteristic like this and then never develop it. Unless, of course, you have no idea how to write. And you're just stabbing at weirdness hoping ingenuity will shine through.
Chevkov said that if you introduce a gun in the first act it must be fired in the second. This is like WRITING 101 here people. Too many independent auteurs completely disregard this concept and introduce an entire arsenal of characters without firing a shot. Little Miss Sunshine does not make this mistake. The mute-by-choice teenager (played with such gravitas by Paul Dano) must eventually speak. And does. And its great. The heroin-snorting grandfather (a giggle-inducing Alan Arkin) does have to face the consequences of addiction. And he does. And it sets up the finale at the pageant. I mean, these are well-placed sniper shots of narrative (to kill the metaphor) and the pay-off for every one is excellent.
It's just a great movie. It makes you feel good at the end. It's well-paced. Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, and Steve Carell are all wonderful. Abigail Breslin who plays Olive (and was in Keane) anchors the movie in a lot of ways. Or, at least, Olive personifies overall theme of "you're a winner if you try." Breslin is SO GOOD. One scene in particular between her and Arkin will floor you. And if it doesn't, you have no soul. She is one of those child actors you're mystified by. Dakota Fanning can eat shit. I'm putting my money on Breslin.
Bottom Line: A fun summer film for the Eternal Sunshine crowd and, in my opinion, much better than any recent offerings from Wes Anderson or David O. Russell.
8 comments:
No offense, Ard, but don't try and blow Napoleon Dynamite off like you thought it sucked. You freaking LOVED that movie when you saw it in limited release. Or you were lying and telling me to go see it just to see what would happen.
But it's good that Little Miss Sunshine seems to have done something right. Perhaps you'll be ranting about how much IT sucked 2 years from now.
whatever.
GOSH!
wow. you guy'z thanksgivings must be awesome!
saw it this weekend and loved it. It's one of those movies that in now way should work. It's contrived, the script is predictable and light and yet it's still awesome.
I want to see this so bad! Hopefully it will come to my area soon.
one of the best movies i've seen in a long time. the story is simply literary.
i am dumbfounded how it is that people like this movie so much. the fact that it is up for the academy award for best picture is absurd. i thought i had lost all respect for the academy after crash one last year, but i have lost even more respect this year after this tragedy. there were a few bright spots, some of the characters were interesting, and the little girl did pretty well with her role. the story was shallow and boring. the humor, after the grandpa died, seems idiotic- they had to rely on a bad car horn for one of the biggest laughs in the second half of the movie. and hiding a dead body is comical and original? maybe 40 years ago. it was just a basic feel good story piece of crap with a terrible ending and i get the feeling it has struck a good nerve because of its "indie" feel. if you want to see a good movie see "children of men," it makes sunshine look like some garabage out of a liberal arts film class.
Wow, (bitter) anonymous, it seems you needed watching "LMS feel good story piece of crap" even more than me.
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