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| Little Miss Sunshine |
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  (5/10)
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Runtime: 101 |
| Public Rating: 9.17 (23 votes) |
Director: Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Comedy-Drama |
Year: 2006 |
| Writer(s): Michael Arndt |
| Distributor: Fox Searchlight |
| Reviewed by: Friday and Saturday Night Critic |
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Additional review(s) by:
Julian Boyance [7/10] (view).
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The word for today, kids, is “Indiewood.” That’s when a Hollywood studio produces or distributes a groundbreaking independent movie whose style and subject matter is EXACTLY like every groundbreaking independent movie that’s come before it. The term “independent movie” is about as accurate as “singer-songwriter;” Robert Smith of The Cure writes and sings his own songs but he’ll never get the appellation. Similarly, “independent movie” basically means a cookie-cutter in the footsteps of “American Beauty” and “Sideways” in which depressed and talky white people heal through profanity and conventional compositions or “ironically detached” long shots. And like all “independent movies” “Little Miss Sunshine” stars an Oscar winner, two Oscar nominees, and the star of box-office smash “The 40-Year-Old Virgin.”
So I didn’t expect a moment of originality or much visual flair – what really surprised me is what a contrived sitcom “Little Miss Sunshine” turns out to be. The set-up is such a “set-up,” an excuse for a “quirky family” to yammer at each other in different locations on a road trip. The movie is overwritten within an inch of its life, muscling out most traces of human spontaneity. “Little Miss Sunshine” has a lot to say about winning and losing, and then says it all by ending with a couple “what we’ve learned today” speeches flecked with f-words to “keep it real.” Some of the movie’s promotions actually include “they put the ‘fun’ in ‘dysfunctional’” and the dad yells at his family to “pretend we’re normal!” both lines used in the first season of “The Simpsons” in 1990.
Still, these are talented players, and Steve Carrell has some good deadpan moments and Alan Arkin’s heroin-snorting grandpa is amusing. Abigail Breslin’s precocious little girl, always asking the most poignant question at the right time, can be trying.
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