Little Miss Sunshine"
Steve Carell runs off with our hearts in this sweet-tempered dysfunctional-family road movie.
By Stephanie Zacharek
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Little Miss Sunshine
Greg Kinnear, Steve Carell, Paul Dano, Toni Collette, Abigail Breslin
The dysfunctional-family road movie "Little Miss Sunshine," about a ragtag group of relations desperate to get the youngest member to a kiddie beauty pageant in another town, tries to pretend it's less cute than it is. Grandpa has a potty mouth; the suicidal gay uncle is a Proust scholar; the teenage son hates everyone and has taken a vow of silence: Each character has his or her own personal idiosyncratic hang tag for easy identification, and once the inevitable on-the-road calamities start piling up, their collective neuroses boil over into a carefully scripted froth. Still, "Little Miss Sunshine" isn't the kind of movie you want to beat up on: It's sweet-tempered at its core, and even when it's trying too hard to reinforce its own quirks, the charms of its actors filter through effortlessly. This is an ensemble movie in which every performer is beautifully in sync -- a potent reverse metaphor for the way most families aren't.
Mom and Pop are Sheryl and Richard, played by Toni Collette and Greg Kinnear: He's a blatantly unsuccessful (and annoying) motivational speaker, waiting for his big break. That means her job is the one holding the family together financially, and you can see how the stress of that has frayed her nerves. Sheryl certainly has enough to deal with: Her brother, Frank (Steve Carell), has just been sprung from the hospital after attempting suicide, spurred by a failed love affair. Their son, Dwayne (Paul Dano), is a taciturn lad who doesn't yet know what his personality is, so he's crafted one out of youthful posturing: He's devoted to Nietzsche, and he's taken that aforementioned vow of silence; he dreams of someday being a pilot. Kinnear's father, played by Alan Arkin, also lives with the family, gracing their dinner table with nonstop foul language -- a gimmick that's funny at first and less funny later, although it ultimately wings around toward being funny again.
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this is a wonderful movie that is not a vacation remake but rather a road story with a bunch of misfits...its a statement on stereotypes, beauty and family...
it made me laugh and laugh and laugh in a owen meany- garp-quirky way
