Little Miss Sunshine – Here’s a dark-humored film with a sunny title that’s better than RV with Robin Williams and nominated for Academy Awards. But not that much better.

The Hoovers are a dysfunctional family residing in Albuquerque, NM. Richard (Greg Kinner) is the dad, a motivational speaker trying to get his positive-thinking book Refuse to Lose published, who repeatedly reminds everyone that there are only two kinds of people, winners and losers, and “winners don’t give up.” Sheryl (Toni Collette) is the mom, who believes in honesty. Dwayne (Paul Dano) is the teenage son, a devotee of Nietsche, who has taken a vow of silence because he hates everyone and wants to get into the Air Force Academy to become a pilot. Frank (Steve Carell) is Sheryl’s clinically depressed gay brother, a Proust scholar, recently released from the hospital after attempting to commit suicide (because after unrequited love for a male grad student at the college where he taught he lost his job and lost out to another Proust scholar, with whom the grad student fell in love, who received a MacArthur genius award for his superior scholarship). Grandpa (Alan Arkin) is Richard’s father, a foul-mouthed cynic who was dismissed from a retirement home for sniffing heroin, who advises Dwayne to have sex with lots of women, especially the young ones while he’s still a minor. Olive (Abigail Breslin) is a seven-year-old plain, pudgy girl who learns that she has won a spot in the competition for Little Miss Sunshine where she will innocently expose the underlying, subliminal message of all beauty pageants.

Everybody piles into the family’s yellow-and-while VW bus for the drive to southern California where the pageant is to take place in two days. The clutch goes out (the bus has to be pushed to get it started), the horn breaks and bleats most of the way from Phoenix to LA, and worse. But like RV the movie has unrealistic scenes such as the family members several times pushing the VW on level ground to get the engine started in third gear by popping the clutch and then individually running to catch up and clamber aboard, no traffic through Phoenix, Dwayne’s not realizing previously that he was colorblind, and a desperate drive on one-way streets and over sidewalks to get to the hotel for the pageant. But the most unbelievable thing is that no one in the family knows beforehand the dance number Grandpa taught Olive for her talent competition (or if this wasn’t the same routine she performed in Albuquerque, what did she show off in the talent competition then to attract attention?).

Click here for links to places to buy or rent this movie in video and/or DVD format, or to buy the soundtrack, posters, books, even used videos, games, electronics and lots of other stuff. I suggest you shop at least two of these places before buying anything. Prices seem to vary continuously. For more information on this film, click on this link to The Internet Movie Database. Type in the name of the movie in the search box and press enter. You will be able to find background information on the film, the actors, and links to much more information.

Copyright © 2007 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

Patrick Ivers can be reached via e-mail at .