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A Slice of Life
by Francine Brokaw
Little Miss Sunshine
Seven-year-old Olive (Abigail Breslin) wants to be a beauty queen. She has been practicing her routine religiously with her cocaine-using, porn-reading grandfather (Alan Arkin) in their house in Albuquerque. Her father (Greg Kinnear) is a motivational speaker who talks to his family the way he talks to his audiences. Are they winners or are they losers? Combine this with her mother (Toni Collette) who only wants her kids to be happy, her uncle (Steve Carell) who just tried to commit suicide, and her brother (Paul Dano) who has taken a vow of silence until he gets into flight training, and you have the makings of an unusual family, to put it mildly.
Everyone piles into their beat-up VW bus to trek from New Mexico to Redondo Beach, California for the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant. It’s difficult to say if the journey or the destination is the funniest, as their mishaps along the way will remind audiences of the hit film Vacation – yes, it’s that kooky! These guys just can’t catch a break. Now, add the actual beauty pageant to the mix and you have some hilarious scenes. While Olive desperately wants to be the winner, she definitely stands out in the world of child pageant contestants. She is sincere and down-to-earth, unlike her co-contestants.
The characters are a bizarre mix of eccentric people who prove, in the end, that family is the most important thing. They start out living in their own worlds, but in the end they are closer than ever.
The movie is rated R for language, some sex and drug content. It’s an unusual look at an unusual family.
© 2006 Francine Brokaw
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