I saw Little Miss Sunshine earlier in the fall at the Pasadena Laemmle 7 Theaters. It is hysterically funny. It is also an interesting commentary on body image, particularly in children.It was released on DVD recently, in time for the holiday season (no, I'm not going to use the "C word") and the movie awards season. Interestingly, it is also getting some attention from the end-of-year critics Top 10 lists.
The movie stars Greg Kinnear as Richard, the head of a family who is trying to get his self-help book published and marketed. His harried wife Sheryl is played by the fabulous Toni Collette, whose gay brother Frank played by Steve Carrell, is the second most important Proust scholar in the United States and who recently failed at a suicide attempt.
But wait, there's more! Alan Arkin plays Grandpa, Richard's father who has been kicked out of a senior residence for illegal drug use. Richard and Sheryl have two kids, the teenaged Dwayne (Paul Dano) who reads Nietzsche and refuses to speak until he turns 18, and Olive (Abigail Breslin), a cute, slightly rotund little girl who has a dream of winning a children's beauty contest (remember JonBenet Ramsey?) called Little Miss Sunshine.
The plot revolves around the road trip from Albuquerque to Anaheim with the entire "family" to allow the unlikely Olive to compete in the Little Miss Sunshine contest. At its core, the movie, written by Michael Arndt and directed by Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton, is a satirical meditation and subversively funny commentary on the nature of the American family and contemporary American mores.
It's running time is short (101 minutes) but the length of time the movie stays with you is significantly longer than most films I have seen this year.
GRADE: A-.
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