When it comes to summer blockbusters, the first images to come to a movie-goer's mind this summer have been Superman, pirates and, of course, snakes on planes.
However, it's been an entirely different type of film that has sat in the top 10-weekend box office during these last waning moments of summer fun.
Little Miss Sunshine is the story of beauty pageant fanatic and participant Olive (Abigail Breslin), whose dream of winning a competition captures the attention of her highly dysfunctional family. They find themselves on a 700-mile sojourn from their home in Albuquerque, N. M., to the pageant site in Redondo Beach, Cal.
Co-directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (newcomers to full-length features but long-time music video directors) start the movie with as little a character introduction as possible. This type of exposition is perfect, because we see that each character is based on a common family archetype, which allows for a wide audience to relate to the entire family. However, throughout the movie we find each character has his or her own quirk that makes them unique and entertaining.
The beauty in this short exposition is that we are thrust into the family right away, and it's the character's evolution, not the storyline, that serves the plot of the movie. Everyday problems may happen to this family, but these people are not your average slice of white bread Americana.
Olive lives in her own little fantasy world -- as most children do -- however, she doesn't just live vicariously through people like Miss America; she truly wants her dream of winning a beauty pageant to come true. She's always willing to learn more or practice that extra step but is also concerned about image, certainly more than any 7-year-old I've ever met.
Her father, Richard (Greg Kinnear), is a motivational speaker who coincidentally is unsuccessful. His overt pressure on Olive to accentuate the positive to win at life comes in direct conflict with his own failure of a career. With each mounting failure comes Richard's increased motivation to help his daughter. Olive's mom, Sheryl (Toni Collette), tries desperately to keep the family's nerves in check all while losing her own nerve, which is characterized in her inability to quit smoking.
Uncle Frank (Steve Carell), Sheryl's brother, is the Number One Proust scholar in America who attempted suicide after being dumped by his gay lover for the Number Two Proust scholar. Carell's ability to convey comedy while still being a sardonic and depressed scholar is unparalleled. Frank has achieved so much success but still can't get his own life in order, and his reflective sarcasm suits the themes of comedy and failure.
Rounding out the best ensemble cast this side of Ocean's Eleven is Grandpa (Alan Arkin), who is as ornery and dirty-minded as any grandfather, except his quirk is snorting heroin; and Olive's brother Dwayne (Paul Dano), who is a distant, quiet teen. Dwayne's silence isn't from your average teen angst, it's culled from studying Nietzsche and his disciplined regiment in hopes of attending flight school.
The exaggerated generalities of the characters shine through in each scene, as we all can attest to having a mother and father who quarrel, a quirky uncle or dirty-minded grandfather. However, the real victory for the movie is its ability to convey a heart-warming tone while still being bleakly comedic.
Little Miss Sunshine allows for an audience to escape into a world where you can worry about someone else for 101 minutes. At the same time it allows us to see that while we may not have problems that are as embellished as those in the movie, every family has some kind of problem that can be worked through in some way or another.
Grade:B+
