dysfunctional-ity galore!!!!
The last names of directing team Dayton-Faris alongside Ms. Toni Collette were enough to make me want to go see "Little Miss Sunshine", but around Xmas season I was rather uhhh… busy, and couldn't catch it. Fortunately, the world release schedule of the film allowed me to see it one month and an ocean away from Mr. Schrock but I still managed to fully enjoy it.
I'm a sucker for dysfunctional family movies (the good, the bad and the ugly kind, just bring 'em on!!!) but I've been digging in the deepest corners of my rusty CPU and can't seem to remember any one that so deftly manages to be darkly funny, distressingly moving, sharp and neurotic (it felt like The Royal Tenenbaums but filmed by Isabel Coixet from a script by David Sedaris).
I’ve heard/read complaints of it being a little "too" calculated in terms of characters, story and plot turns but I’d say the whole thing manages to flow just so and the cast is absolute perfection in human-actor/ress form (the ever bland wallflower of Mr. Kinnear has never –and I doubt he will ever- been so well used and abused in film).
Toni Collette has built a strong resume of hapless, unfit mothers, sort of like the dark side of her ditzy, comedic film persona. And although her performance here is somehow more subtle and muted (than in, say, “About a boy”) she still manages to become the glue that keeps the characters, and the story, together. The kids are more than alright and the elders are just as fine: Alan Arkin doing wonders in his little screen time and Steve Carell proving that he’s not just another goof.
What’s great about “Little Miss Sunshine” (what “elevates” it from the realm of habitual “dark” comedies) is the brutal honesty it uses to portray its characters and people’s particularly boring obsession with so-called-success –then, it’s kind of a guilty pleasure imagining the filmmakers having Oscar dreams in the back of their minds…-. So what are you supposed to do if you can’t/don’t/won’t meet the criteria required to triumph in this deranged world of ours? You just buckle up, do your thing and give everybody the finger (à la “Ghost World”), making sure you keep your brethren at the right distance: not so close that they burn you, or so far that they fade away (like my grandma used to say).
---Jano---