Little Miss Sunshine

In the era of instant messengers, iPods, and Reality TV, can the act of going to the movies still generate the communal power it once produced so long ago, when film was a new and magical experience? Technology has become so far advanced that any human being can now successfully hide themselves within a safe cocoon of home entertainment, devoid of any pesky personal contact with the outside world. Thus, the exhilaration caused by a group of strangers becoming similarly affected by the power of cinematic art has become quite a rarity in contemporary movie houses. That is precisely why a film like Little Miss Sunshine is so special.

It breaks no new artistic ground, nor has anything particularly profound to say. A bare-bones description of its premise can hardly be thought of as “original” – bickering dysfunctional family sets out on a road trip to take their pudgy young daughter to a beauty contest. Yet from its enormous success at Sundance (where audiences often broke out into enthusiastic applause) to its journey into mainstream release after climbing the box office charts, this film has proven its ability to move a large jaded audience to riotous laughter and exuberant cheers. The secret to Sunshine’s success lies not in the plot’s basic setup, but in its ingenious execution. Each character’s eccentricity is generated from a fully developed and realized personality, intelligently crafted by screenwriter Michael Arndt and acted to perfection by one of the finest comic ensembles in recent memory.

Greg Kinnear is the optimistic bobble-head of the household, attempting to solve each daily conflict with one of his failed motivational speeches. Toni Collette’s defiant stability, as Kinnear’s long-suffering wife, seems to be pitched at the brink of insanity, as she struggles to keep her family from bursting apart (the way she chomps on a popsicle is a textbook study in suppressed neurosis). Steve Carell continues his winning streak of uproarious yet grounded performances with his role as a suicidal gay uncle, who sporadically breaks out into the most side-splitting run since John Cleese’s Monty Python march. Paul Dano embodies adolescent angst like a second-skin as Kinnear’s oft-silent son, conveying volumes with a mere sardonic tilt of his head. Alan Arkin meanwhile embodies the anarchic glee of past decades, mouthing off four-letter philosophies and snorting coke, all the while giving genuine amounts of tough-love to son Kinnear.

Yet amongst this wildly entertaining, exemplary group of performers, it is eight-year-old Abigail Breslin that unquestionably steals the show as Kinnear’s pageant-hopeful daughter. Sporting spectacles that would drown Woody Allen’s, and placed directly on the line separating innocence from reason, Breslin’s performance is entirely devoid of smarmy cuteness or mechanical precociousness. The purity of her eagerness and hope forges a duet with her growing obsession and frustration, aimed at the perfection of a self-image that, during the film’s unforgettable climax, is as beautifully misguided as the other character’s pursuits.

Married co-directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris have a deft eye for uncovering the sublime in the shabby, the beauty in the ugly, the perfection in the flaws. Their film finds laughs in the simplest and oddest of places, like a malfunctioning car horn that sounds remarkably like the Road Runner being crushed by a steamroller. Sunshine’s mixture of unpredictable guffaws (none of which the trailers, nor I, will ruin) and gritty observation recalls the uncensored sensibilities of 70’s antiestablishment pictures like Harold and Maude. It gives audiences the shameless lift of a studio-bred heart-warmer like Sister Act, coupled with the offbeat charm of Napoleon Dynamite.

Yet none of these comparisons can truly do justice to what makes Little Miss Sunshine so uniquely wonderful. I felt more like a participant than an observer at the joyous sold-out screening of the film I attended at Chicago’s own Century Centre Cinema. It may have been the first film I’ve ever publicly viewed where the entire audience was either roaring with laughter or popping suppressed giggles like red-hot kernels. The final moments of Sunshine are so thoroughly unexpected, wildly hilarious, completely outrageous, startlingly inevitable, and oddly moving, that the audience broke into applause long before the credits began their scroll. While the audience-participation during Snakes on a Plane felt as hollow as the film itself, Little Miss Sunshine cuts right to the heart of our own fears and insecurities. It triumphantly emerges as a celebration of humanity’s common flaws and quirks – the kind that can easily connect strangers, united by sheer pleasure in a darkened movie house. Who could have expected that a carload of depressed losers would together create what is sure to be the finest feel-good movie of the year?

Rating: ***** (out of *****)