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Film review

A light in the darkness

Just when you think there's little to like about Little Miss Sunshine, it comes back to charm you.

By STEVE PERSALL
Published August 17, 2006

[Little Miss Sunshine]

It’s the performances that make Little Miss Sunshine a movie to enjoy. From left, Greg Kinnear, Steve Carell, Paul Dano, Toni Collette and Abigail Breslin star in the film.

Little Miss Sunshine is warm and fuzzy in a sneaky sort of way, and funny almost as an afterthought despite its faint resemblances to other comedies. It is a road trip with a family not much different from the Griswolds on vacation, except the Hoover clan seriously doesn't like each other. Except for young Olive, whom everyone loves, and who can blame them?

Olive, played by adorable Abigail Breslin, has a dream, while grouchy grownups encircling her have surrendered theirs. She desperately wants to be Miss America, or at least to win the title Little Miss Sunshine, one of those kiddie pageants where children emulate the makeup, costumes and dance moves of tawdry role models.

We want her to win even as we worry what it would do to her innocence, whatever remains after dealing with her family.

Her father Richard Greg Kinnear is a walking irony, a self-help expert who hasn't progressed far on his nine-step plan for success. Her mother Sheryl (Toni Collette) is an enabler at the end of patience that should have run out long ago.

Olive's brother Dwayne (Paul Dano) has adopted a vow of silence, scribbling resentment on a note pad. Richard's father (Alan Arkin) snorts heroin when he isn't scanning porn or coaching Olive's talent routine. Sheryl's brother Frank (Steve Carell) is a Proust scholar coming off a failed suicide attempt after his gay romance ended.

This is a family unit better suited to an R. Crumb cartoon than a Norman Rockwell painting.

Little Miss Sunshine details their trip from a neglectfully cluttered home in Albuquerque, N.M., to the pageant finals in Redondo Beach, Calif., with frequent detours through domestic hell. An old Volkswagen bus with transmission problems is the least of their worries. The Hoovers and Frank will each discover something lost along the way. Miraculously, Olive's find is the family spirit she is too young to understand was missing.

This is delicate material handled with R-rated honesty, even in its exaggerations of dysfunction. Everything to love about the movie is in the writing and performances, since co-directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris maintain a straightforward approach to farcical situations. Their shoestring budget shows in each poorly lighted or jerkily photographed scene; the movie, like the Hoover household, is messier than we'd like to see.

But slowly, stealthily, Little Miss Sunshine succeeds, guiding viewers from shocked laughter to smiles of satisfied resolution. Nothing should work out for these people, but it does, in ways we least expect. We shouldn't like anyone except Olive but we do, for reasons we couldn't imagine at the outset.

Like the similar tone of Sideways, Little Miss Sunshine is darkly conceived, making the tiniest rays of brightness mean so much more. A comforting hand, supportive words or unsolicited assistance from unlikely sources are the payoffs, rather than some phony arm-in-arm victory.

At first glance the Hoovers are nothing like us. By the fadeout, they're still odd but quirkily unified, a family unit we wouldn't mind joining. Tricky, but Michael Arndt's deceptively slight screenplay makes it happen.

The performances are nearly perfect, from actors aware of their characters' finest traits no matter what the script has them doing. Kinnear is much better as a deluded know-it-all than the bathos of As Good As It Gets that earned an Oscar nomination. Collette again proves her underrated ability to convey deep emotion without showing off. Carell's subdued performance will surprise fans of The 40-Year-Old Virgin and The Office, although the same insecurities are somewhere under that glum expression.

But the two actors deserving to be remembered at awards time are Arkin and Breslin, a newcomer who dazzles with her ease before the camera and a veteran too long overlooked for his casual brilliance. She'll have other opportunities, but his are sadly running out at age 72. Arkin has been one of my favorite actors for 40 years and hasn't earned an Oscar nomination in almost as long. Maybe this time.

Steve Persall can be reached at (727) 893-8365 or persall@sptimes.com

Little Miss Sunshine

Grade: A-

Directors: Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris

Cast: Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, Steve Carell, Abigail Breslin, Alan Arkin, Paul Dano

Screenplay: Michael Arndt

Rating: R; strong profanity, drug abuse, mature themes, sexual content

Running time: 101 min.

[Last modified August 16, 2006, 10:45:36]