August usually isn’t the month to find the best of the summer movies, but this year Hollywood has saved the best for last. This is the funniest film I’ve seen since THE 40-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN — the ending had me laughing so hard I was in tears. Fox Searchlight paid $10.5 million at the Sundance Film Festival for the rights to distribute this film, which was a huge amount for an indie production. They got their money's worth.
Written by Michael Arndt and directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (all making their feature debuts), the film is a quirky, sometimes dark, comedic road picture, which skewers the notion of winners and losers. The family in the center of the story is headed to California in their VW bus after 7-year-old Olive (Abigail Breslin, SIGNS) is accepted into the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant.
Richard (Greg Kinnear, AS GOOD AS IT GETS) is the father, a wanna-be self-help guru who inflicts the tenets of his 9-step program on everyone. Sheryl (Toni Collette, IN HER SHOES) is the frazzled mother, who tries her hardest to hold the family together. Her brother Frank (Steve Carell, THE 40-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN) just attempted suicide after an affair with a male student went wrong. Richard and Sheryl’s son Dwayne (Paul Dano, THE GIRL NEXT DOOR) wants to be a jet pilot and has decided to stop speaking until he attains this goal. Then there’s heroin-snorting Grandpa (Alan Arkin, 13 CONVERSATIONS ABOUT ONE THING).
At first, I was afraid that this film would be another indie with quirky, wacky characters that have no resemblance to real people. But the filmmakers find ways to make their quirks seem natural as well as linking them to the overall themes of the story. Grandpa is a perfect example of this. He’s snorting heroin, because he’s come to a time in his life where he’s tired of following the restraints of society and is living life completely as he wants to. They are a family of losers, but Grandpa does have some wisdom underneath his crude and direct approach.
The acting is wonderful. Each performer is subtle and believable. Arkin’s performance reminds me of his work in SLUMS OF BEVERLY HILLS. Kinnear is the perfect choice as the smarmy inspirational speaker. Carell is quite droll and finds a perfect accomplice in Dano to work off of. Breslin is a talented young actress, who makes us believe in Olive. Collette may have the most difficult role, because she has less obvious traits and ticks. But watch how she observes the other characters and you clearly know what she’s thinking.
Dayton and Faris do a great job of never forcing the comedy. The laughs come naturally from the characters and the situation. At the end, they devilishly have fun with emphasizing the over-sexualizing of little girls in beauty pageants. The ending is pitch perfect — surprising, hilarious and poignant. LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE is a much needed ray of sunlight in what has been a pretty disappointing summer of movies.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
