Seen It: Little Miss Sunshine
Lady and I went to see Little Miss Sunshine Saturday night. She had heard about it somewhere, I forget, and read about it again in the Ritz filmbill when we went to see Strangers with Candy and it made her see it even more. She told me that Steve Carell was in it and that's all I needed to hear. I loved this movie. And Lady thinks it may very well be her favorite movie ever.
Stick your not so typical dysfunctional family, pack them in a car, send them on a roadtrip and you got a pretty funny premise to begin with. But when the cast comes together as they did in this one with some incredible chemistry, you have an instant classic.
Greg Kinnear plays the father who is a motivational speaker looking to get a book deal [the dad from Malcom in the Middle is his agent]. Toni Collette plays the mother struggling to keep all the pieces of the family puzzle together. Alan Arkin plays the heroin sniffing grandfather constantly telling his teenaged grandson to have sex with as many women as possible and not settle down. Carell plays the mother's brother and just attempted suicide, he's also America's foremost Proustian scholar. Paul Dano plays the angsty teenager who has taken a vow of silence, somehow based on the philosophy of Nietzsche, until he gets into the Air Force to become a pilot. Abigail Breslin plays the youngest child who has won a reginal beauty contest and has qualified for a spot in the Little Miss Sunshine contest in California.
This film is hilariously funny, but not in a slapstick way. The writing drives the film throughout and it kept me wanting more with the end of each scene. Not entirely surprising that this refreshing film is the first feature film for writer Michael Arndt and directors Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton, who Lady tells me are a husband-wife team.
It's playing in both theaters at the Ritz East. It played happily to a packed theater on Saturday night. I'm glad so many people went to see it on the opening weekend.
I loved this one.
Poster: Warner Bros.
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August 17th, 2006 @ 2:26 pm
There is a fine line between motivational speakers and "cult leaders." And I think Kinnear touches that line without going over it. It was great to see him subverted in the Denny's scene. Kinnear's smartguy approach seems to echo in some ways the drunk errant father from "Talladega Nights" where the father says "if your not first, your last."
I also liked the satire this movie did to the pageant industry. I cringed every time they showed a mother with a spray can. Carrell did a great job in this somewhat subdued role, but you could tell he honestly did care about these people while not necessarily greatly inspired by their behavior.