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House review of Little Miss Sunshine (2006)

There ought to be an Academy Award for Best Ensemble Cast. If there were, this film would have it in the bag. It certainly did get its share of nominations, in any case; Best Actress for Abigail Breslin, Best Supporting Actor for Alan Arkin (who won the Oscar), and Best Picture. But the level of excellence in this film transcended any one actor or contributor. Toni Collette and Greg Kinnear, as the mother and father of this painfully normal family, achieve a sort of disdainful affection with each other. Paul Dano’s silent nihilist teen bonds with his suicidal gay Proust scholar uncle Frank, played with a deeper and more gentle humor than we’re used to seeing from Steve Carrell.

The Oscar noms might have gone to Breslin and Arkin because of the centrality of their roles within the family. Arkin plays the grandfather who has been kicked out of his retirement community due to his recently acquired heroin habit. He blusters and shouts profanity, but forms startlingly deep bonds with every other member of the family. Breslin, as 7-year-old Olive, is the one member of the family that everyone looks out for, the one person for whom everyone can somehow manage to overcome his or her self-centeredness.

The film opens with a montage of everyone following his or her own pursuits alone, and finally gathering at the dinner table. One of those individual shots features Olive, running and re-running tapes of a Miss America pageant, imitating the wave, the walk, the smile of the new beauty queen. But it is obvious to the viewer that Olive, bless her, just isn’t that kind of girl. She’s pudgy around the middle, wears huge thick glasses, and is one of the most authentic, unaffected people any of us have ever encountered. We are utterly charmed by her because she is truly herself, and as such becomes an isle of innocence within this wounded family. In the end, it is Olive and her grip on reality that save this family.

The film is a typical road film—the family learns that Olive has qualified to enter the Little Miss Sunshine pageant in California, so they pile into the VW Bus and set out from Albuquerque. The close confines and the unlucky events of the trip serve to turn up the pressure until everyone but Olive is boiling over.

There is humor and pathos at every step of the way, even as these characters are being stripped of the only things they had to cling to. Nobody is spared the story’s cruelty, yet everything that happens and every conversation is so very familiar that I found myself alternately laughing and crying, feeling like someone must have been following my own family with a video camera.

It’s worth mentioning the film’s subtle commentary on femininity and body image. At one stop on the trip, Olive orders ice cream, but her father tells her that winners of beauty pageants are skinny and probably never eat ice cream. Olive is vindicated when she learns that Miss California loves ice cream, and her smile is worth all the angst we’ve suffered along with her. And when Olive offers her talent—in the form of the most inappropriate dance you’ve ever seen—she’s merely enacting in a blatant form what we’ve been seeing from all the contestants the whole time. She shows us exactly what we’ve been doing to our daughters.

This is one of the best ensemble films I can recall seeing at any time. No actor carries more weight, and no character is more necessary than any others. When those strengths are added to the directors' light but empathetic touch, the beautiful photography, and the strong writing, Little Miss Sunshine more than earned its place on the Best Film slate.

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Film Rating: 5.4/10 (12 votes cast)

Reviewed by Elessar
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