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Movies of the decade: Little Miss Sunshine
4:00 am Oct 1 - by Stephanie Ruiz – buzz Writer
“There are two kinds of people in the world: winners and losers.” Perhaps the same can be said about movies. If that’s the case, then 2006’s Little Miss Sunshine can really only fall into one category. Little Miss Sunshine revolves around a beauty pageant, but beauty is really far from what the movie is about; at least, not in our conventional way of understanding it. It’s about what happens when you take a obnoxiously unsuccessful motivational speaker, his wife, a heroin addicted grandfather, the nation’s number one Proust scholar, and an ambitious and incredibly charming little girl, place them into a bright yellow VW van and follow them on a road trip to Redondo Beach, California. But what really lies at the heart of this film is reality; the reality of family dynamics and dysfunction. It’s about interchanging pain and comedy, making us wonder whether the two are really all that different after all.
And while the film itself is zany and chaotic, it’s not done in such a way that makes it completely unbelievable. We’re given an intelligently witty script written by Academy Award winner Michael Arndt, and remarkably framed shots, thanks to the direction of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, who use subtle images to make a profound statement in their beautifully crafted piece.
From the very beginning, we have a sense of precisely who the Hoover family is. Thanks to a montage set to DeVotchKa that distinguishes each character individually through a series of wonderfully executed movements we see this family and how they function. Their interactions and their relationships, faults and all, come to life, and it’s there that we fall in love.
In the end, it’s not really about beauty contests, at all. It’s about the process of discovering your purpose in this hilarious, yet moving satire that leaves quite the impression. And it’s there that the true beauty of this film really lies.
Sound Off
Last post: Oct. 4, 2009 at 12:28 am
Jeff Brandt (Jeff Brandt) said on Oct. 4, 2009 at 12:28 am:
Reading this reminds me of Paul Dano. What happened to him after There Will Be Blood?