Little Miss Sunshine (DVD, 2009, Spa Cash)

Posted by CK-Auctions

It's the little movie that could -- focused on a supremely dysfunctional clan, yet limned with a dark comic spirit and palpable empathy for its fucked up, fucked over cast of characters, Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton's big-screen directorial debut Little Miss Sunshine is that rare blend of pathos and the in-vogue awkward comedy. Most refreshing is that Michael Arndt's subtly lacerating screenplay takes stock clichés and infuses them with quirks that approach reality, albeit an extremely heightened sense of reality; you watch Little Miss Sunshine and see a splintered, spirited family unit grow closer and approach something resembling understanding.

To ruin the surprises of Little Miss Sunshine would rob those coming to the film for the first time: the endearingly combative Hoover family – led by self-help patriarch Richard (Greg Kinnear), daughter Olive (Abigail Breslin) is a budding beauty pageant contestant and her brother Dwayne (Paul Dano) is going on nine months as a mute, studying the nihilistic works of Nietzsche. Mom Sheryl (Toni Collette) has her hands full with her suicidal brother Frank (Steve Carell) and Richard's caustic, drugged out dad (Alan Arkin).

When Olive wins a spot in the prestigious Little Miss Sunshine pageant in Redondo Beach, the Hoovers pile into a past-its-prime Volkswagen van and head out, across New Mexico, towards the promise of a glittering future in California. Little Miss Sunshine doesn't unfold in an entirely predictable manner, often zigging where you might think it would zag – lining scenes with a patently absurd vibe, music video vets turned feature film directors Dayton and Faris swipe a few pages from the Woody Allen/Wes Anderson playbook, electing to play gags straight ahead and letting the laughs evolve naturally.

It helps the directors that they've assembled a cast brimming with impeccable comic timing; Kinnear, Collette, Carell, Breslin, Dano and Arkin take Arndt's screenplay and give it a loose, improvised feel.

A handful of films worth sitting through make it out alive each year that when a work like Little Miss Sunshine comes along, you can't recommend it strongly enough. It's a rib-tickling ray of light beamed from Hollywood, of all places, reminding you that, yes, in fact it is possible to be both moved and amused.

Little Miss Sunshine debuts on DVD with both a razor-sharp 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer and a 1.33:1 fullscreen transfer on the reverse side of this flipper disc -- the widescreen image is very clean, vivid and saturated, as befits a recently filmed production. There are a few, fleeting instances of grain, but otherwise, this is a pretty solid visual representation.

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Let me just say this: best ensemble of the year in my opinion. Little Miss Sunshine is about a family pulling together to get their daughter to a beauty pageant on time.

Greg Kinnear plays Richard, a father at the end of his rope financially who is attempting to sell his self-help program to the masses in a book deal. He uses his techniques on his family daily to the point where he's driving them crazy and attempting to give his daughter an eating disorder. He tries to keep them focused on winning and advises them that nothing is worth doing unless you can be the winner. His desperation for success and the damage to his pride make him more loyal to his family than ever, making him go to greater lengths to make his daughter happy.

Toni Collette is an amazing actress who you never see enough. She plays Sheryl and is very much the glue that holds this sad bunch of people together. Between fielding inappropriate questions at the dinner table to curbing her husband's tendency to lecture and keeping Grandpa's obscenities to a minimum while encouraging her son to have goals, she is a non-stop mother.

Steve Carell is a huge favorite of mine!! Here he shows everyone that he has tremendous range. He plays Frank, a jilted Proust scholar who has had everything in his life fall apart all at once. Sheryl has brought him home from the hospital where he was put after attemping to commit suicide and is determined to watch over him until he is no longer a risk. He is thrown into this bunch of misfits and is immediately at odds with Richard who has identified him as a loser to his daughter. He's still trying to figure out if there's anything he wants to go on for when he's forced into this road trip and finds that being there for other people can be enough.

Dwayne, played by Paul Dano, has the least amount of lines in the movie on account of his vow of silence until he can pilot a jet. He meticulously sticks to routines of exercise and reading of Nietzsche and hates his family with teenage rage. Once he finds out that he is color blind and never will be able to reach his goal, he has a nervous breakdown slamming himself into the sides of their van until he can catapult himself out into a field on the side of the road to scream in rage at the sky. When his sister puts an arm around him, his love for her brings him back to the situation at hand and his desire for her to be happy.

Which brings me to her trainer, Grandpa played by Alan Arkin. He has been kicked out of a celestial nursing home for doing drugs and has taken it upon himself to choreograph young Olive's routines and give her pep talks before the big competition. His love for porn and advice to his grandson about his romantic life are priceless.

And last but not least, Olive played by Abigail Breslin. Not only adorable, but has amazing lungs when she screams for joy when she finds out she's eligible for the pageant. Not your typical contestant, she has a big heart and a slightly rounder tummy. While her father attempts to make her feel bad about this fact, the rest of her family supports her love for ice cream because they love her just the way she is. Her dance number at the pageant beats even the Napolean Dynamite dance number n terms of comedy. My gut hurt so bad after watching......you just HAVE to see it for yourself.

Trial after hilarious trial ends up bringing this disconnected family back together with common goals and love for each other.

Little Miss Sunshine depicts every possible dysfunction that a family could have. A grandfather, played by Alan Arkin, curses constantly and abuses drugs. A mother (Toni Collette)rushes around so much that her dinners come from KFC. The father (Greg Kinnear) is trying to sell a motivational book and DVD about winning. (Can you imagine winning and living with a family like this?) The teenage son has taken a vow of silence until he is accepted in the Air Force Academy and wants to fly jets. The uncle is living there because he tried to commit suicide after his gay lover-student broke up with him. And last but most of all not least is the darling pre-teen daughter played by Abigail Breslin, who wants to win a beauty contest. All these desperate people end up in an old Volkswagen van to bring some happiness to this precious little girl because they know how she is fascinated with beauty contests. And besides she has already won a regional contest that automatically qualifies her for entry into the national contest.

Everything bad and some good things happen on their trip. They run into the uncle's ex-gay lover while the uncle is buying porn magazines for the grandfather. The clutch on the van breaks down, and they have to drive in 3rd gear for the last half of the trip. The grandfather dies, and there is nowhere to leave the body. The son finds out that he is color blind, which would disqualify him as a pilot. They get stopped by the police and pay him off with the porn magazines.

But the beauty contest, Little Miss Sunshine, is the highlight. We get to see 25 super-snobby, dressed-to-the-hilt little girls and some of their performances. And we immediately see that they are the real dysfunctionals. Our little girl is the most normal of all. Until she performs. I won't tell you what her talent is, but it is the most hysterical performance because it was taught to her by the grandfather, who is now dead and in the backseat of the van.

The movie is one laugh after another. Alan Arkin won a Supporting Actor Academy Award for his performance as the grandfather. And Abigail Breslin was nominated for Best Supporting Actress and should have won. For a low budget movie, the movie itself was also nominated as Best Picture and won the Best Original Screenplay Academy Award.

It is a great movie to watch to escape from daily downers. It reminded me immediately of Chevy Chase and the Vacation movies, and for that I gave it only a "Good" rating.

At first I hesitated to even rent this movie; just didn't look appealing at first sight. But one rainy afternoon I broke down and rented it. It was love at first sight!
If there is a poster family for "dysfunctional families" the family in Little Miss Sunshine is IT! The movie stars Greg Kinnear (Richard) and Toni Collette (Sheryl) as the parents; Richard is Sheryl's second husband and father of Olive (Abigail Breslin-who is absolutely ADORABLE). Richard is trying to get his self-created 9-step program off the ground and while hitting every bumb and snag along the way he is finding it very difficult to keep to his own 9-steps to success.
Alan Arkin is Kinnear's father who we find out has been kicked out of the nursing home because he is a Heroin addict and an obvious sex fiend; he is also Olive's "coach" and teaches her "the dance" that she performs at the Little Miss Sunshine contest (which is in itself, HILARIOUS!)
Steve Carell plays Toni's brother who is gay and also extremely intelligent, who comes to live with Sheryl and Richard's little family after attempting suicide when his young lover jilts him for another laureate scholar; he is on “suicide watch” and therefore has to share a room with Olive's half-brother Dwayne (Paul Dano-who is wonderful in this movie, by the way) who has taken a vow of silence and is into [Nietzsche]; Dwayne has dreams of being a pilot in the Air Force; he later discovers that he is color blind and breaks his vow of silence in a hilariously serious way! SO, they all take a road trip to the Little Miss Sunshine contest in an old Volkswagen bus! the transmission goes out along the way and they end up having to push the bus off in 3rd gear which explains the cover art of them running to "catch the bus", if you will!
Being that this was also the last movie Alan Arkin appeared in before he died, it is an endearing tribute to his acting career; his grandfatherly love and often gruff and straightforward approach with Olive and Dwayne and his son Richard (Kinnear) is definitely a plus for this movie. They are able to touch on all the characters lives fully and richly while not overdoing it to the point that you want to say “OK, get on with it already!”
The Little Miss Sunshine competition truly captures the behind the scenes of pageants and pokes a bit of fun at those who take themselves and these pageants a tad bit too seriously and forget that childhood is a journey to be savored and enjoyed with memorable moments, not a blurry, dizzying race to the finish line!
I bought this movie for my own movie library because it is quirky, endearing, adorable, real and just simply a GREAT movie!

A very quirky family embarks on a road trip from Albuquerque to Los Angeles to get their young girl to a beauty pageant. Greg Kinnear is the motivational speaker father who pushes the girl to perfection while Toni Collette plays the hippy-dippy mother who urges the child to be natural and do as she wishes without putting pressure on herself. Add an odd brother (Paul Dano) who is mute by choice and a X-rated grandfather (Alan Arkin) add to the insanity.

I saw this with my mother and sister over Christmas. Mom hated it. Sis and I were so eager to see it since we'd both heard so much about it but we both sat there, scratching our heads, and wondered what it was we were missing about the "greatness" of this film. Granted, there were some funny bits but for the most part, the whole thing just didn't work for either one of us. While young Abigail Breslin is being touted as the next Dakota Fanning, we couldn't see that either. She was a cute little girl who turned in what we thought was a quite ordinary performance.

I do appreciate what was done on a shoestring budget for this film and, as I said, there were some genuine laughs, but I suspect my sister and I were expecting so my more based on the hype when this film hit theaters.

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