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Pile together a blue-ribbon cast, a screenplay high in quirkiness, and the Sundance stamp of approval, and you've got yourself a crossover indie hit. That formula worked forLittle Miss Sunshine, a frequently hilarious study of family dysfunction. Meet the Hoovers, an Albuquerque clan riddled with depression, hostility, and the tattered remnants of the American Dream; despite their flakiness, they manage to pile into a VW van for a weekend trek to L.A. in order to get moppet daughter Olive (Abigail Breslin) into the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant. Much of the pleasure of this journey comes from watching some skillful comic actors doing their thing: Greg Kinnear and Toni Collette as the parents (he's hoping to become a self-help authority), Alan Arkin as a grandfather all too willing to give uproariously inappropriate advice to a sullen teenage grandson (Paul Dano), and a subdued Steve Carell as a jilted gay professor on the verge of suicide. The film is a crowd-pleaser, and if anything is a little too eager to bend itself in the direction of quirk-loving Sundance audiences; it can feel forced. But the breezy momentum and the ingenious actors help push the material over any bumps in the road.--Robert Horton
Amazing movie This movie, "Little Miss Sunshine", is an incredible piece of work. Albeit I didn't believe when people said it was a comedy after I saw it. I thought it was really depressing personally. I think it's because it's so true to real life. When this movie was recommended to me by a friend it was described as "funny". My friend was amazed to find that I found it quite depressing because it was so close to real life and the things I've found about life. I recommend this movie because it was a work of art in itself. Unlike other movies about a quirky family that goes on a trip together this one had a more realistic plot to it. It had a happy ending, in a sense. Not like a "I'm so glad that they got out alright" ending but more like a "I'm glad that it sort of worked out right at the end." I recommend seeing this. Yay!
Beepin Banana Bus This film was hysterical. While I think most everyone relates to Olive at some point, the fully represented dynamic of the nutty family is probably equally familiar. I loved everything about this film, except that it ended.On the sunny side of the street A country, that produces movies, which are as scathingly sarcastic about its own culture, cannot be entirely lost to civilization. America does understand America after all. I have hope. This movie is as black a piece of humour as you can find. Possibly not even the title hero is quite right in her mind, but let us be generous. She is cute. The most so when she loses her mind over having qualified for the finals. The rest of the family has been accurately summarized as "dysfunctional". What a nice word. Whoever found it and popularized it deserves a special praise. It is even better, all by itself, than Greg Kinnear's wonderful lecture on refusing to lose. Only in America... It is so realistic, you could shed tears over it. It is so funny, you can hardly ever laugh, seriously.
