A motivational speaker stands on a spot lit
stage, presenting his 9-step “Refuse to Lose” program to an unseen audience in
the darkness.
A little girl sits in the family room
repeatedly watching and rewinding a videotape recording of the climax of a Miss
America contest.
A teenage boy works out in his bedroom,
lifting weights and doing press-ups. There’s a half opened parachute hanging
from the ceiling. An enormous portrait of the philosopher Neitszche, painted
onto a bedsheet, is pinned to one wall.
An old man snorts heroin off a small mirror
in a locked bathroom.
A woman talks on a cell phone as she drives
her car. She has a cigarette in one hand, and is telling the person the phone
that “of course I’m not smoking!”
A suicidally depressed looking bearded man
sits motionless in a wheelchair in a hospital room, attached to a drip, as the
film’s title LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE appears on screen.
Welcome to the dysfunctional Hoover family of Albuquerque,
New Mexico.
Over the course of the next one hundred
minutes we will become so attached to these characters that there will be a
sense of genuine sadness when we are forced to say goodbye as the screen fades
to black for the final time.
The motivational speaker is Richard Hoover,
played by Greg Kinnear. Olive (Abigail Breslin) is his 7 year old daughter,
sitting at home in front of the tv absolutely entranced by the emotional
reaction of the contestant to being named Miss America. Her older brother Dwayne
(Paul Dano) is pumping iron in his bedroom, getting himself fit for his dream
future as an Air Force pilot.
It’s their grandpa, Richard’s dad, played
by Alan Arkin, we see snorting drugs in the bathroom of their suburban home.
Their mom, Sheryl (Toni Collette) is the woman in the car. She’s driving to the
hospital to collect her brother Frank (Steve Carell).
As is revealed shortly afterwards in an
embarrassingly inappropriate conversation at the family dinner table, Uncle
Frank was in hospital because he’d tried to kill himself over an unrequited
love affair with one of his adult male students.
This is not a group of people who should
spend any length of time together in a confined space, but that is exactly what
happens when Olive gets a last minute call-up to compete in the “Little Miss
Sunshine” beauty pageant in Redondo Beach, California.
They all pile into their ancient bright
yellow VW bus for the 800 mile road trip west. The two day journey swiftly
turns into a survival test for the Hoovers
as they’re forced to confront disappointment and death. Will the six of them manage
to keep it together as a family or will the group implode under the pressure?
LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE is a comedy about characters
not action. The focus is on how they cope with each other rather than external events
that happen to them as a group. Fans of “Lost in Translation,” “Garden State”
and “Sideways” will love this family.
The film’s Oscar nomination for Best
Picture Best Supporting Actress (Breslin) and wins for Best Screenplay and Best
Supporting Actor (Arkin) are richly deserved. It’s a wonderful example of
independent cinema’s ability to offer an accessible alternative to mainstream
Hollywood’s staple diet of special effects laden blockbusters. Arkin is laugh-out-loud
funny as the foul mouthed grandfather
These two were singled out by the Academy,
but the whole cast is superb. They are totally convincing as real people we can
identify with, rather than simply characters in a film. They bicker with each
other, and they push against the constraints of the family unit while also
recognising that they need each other.
The fact that LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE is the
first feature film from husband and wife co-directors Jonathan Dayton and
Valerie Faris makes their achievement all the more impressive. On one of the
two director’s commentaries that accompany this DVD, they reveal it took them
almost six years to get the project from the drawing board to the big screen. When
they finally received the green light they were given just thirty days and a
small budget to shoot it.
Funny, touching and – above all –
believable, fans of all that is great about American independent cinema will
want to make this film a permanent part of their DVD collection.
No comments:
Post a Comment