Little Miss Sunshine (2006)

Little Miss Sunshine (2006)

8/10

Starring

Greg Kinnear

Steve Carell

Toni Collette

Alan Arkin

Abigail Breslin

Directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris

Little Miss Sunshine is one of the best movies I have seen. The plot is well designed to pull on your heart strings and then the different surprises that this movie packs, is amazing. It was like the writers thought up all the bag of tricks to make a movie thrilling and, just dump it all in this movie. This here movie has comedy, tragedy, thriller like scenes, mystery and drama all rolled into one.

What we have is an average family with dreams and each getting to see the reality of things. We do not see them in the end become triumphant which is another thing amazing about this movie, but we see them make peace with their differences and move on.

The great ensemble cast of this movie consist of Greg Kinnear, Steve Carell, Toni Collette, Alan Arkin, Paul Dano and Abigail Breslin. Their lives are woven as such, Kinnear and Collette are the married couple Richard and Sheryl Hoover respectively. They have two children, Dwayne (Dano) Sheryl’s son from a previous marriage and Olive (Breslin) a child of both Richard and Sheryl. There is Sheryl’s brother Frank (Carell) who as the movie starts we see just being released. He was hospitalized for attempted suicide and tagged unstable. Then Edwin (Arkin) Richard’s father who is always on the loose with his mouth and got kicked out of the retirement home he was because he started using heroine.

Olive got lucky and she gets called to participate in the Little Miss Sunshine pageant in California and the family cannot afford to fly her there. They have another problem Frank cannot be left on his own and Edwin has been Olive’s dance coach. So they whole family decided to drive to California from Albuquerque. The movie then uses this journey to shed more light on all the characters, there is no wasted time on flash backs or anything, we just get to understand how weirdly wound up they all are. Little Olive though is the only innocent lovely girl in the group, who just wants to be a beauty queen, and regardless of all the challenges, the family wanted by all means to at least help her participate.

The movie is a directorial debut of the husband-wife team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. When it comes to acting, this movie packed enough from season actors to make all the emotions real enough to win you over. And one thing I notices in the movie is that Breslin looked bigger, which after reading up, found out she wore a padded suit to accomplish that.

The movie was a huge box office hit, making over $100 million on a $8 million budget. It won numerous awards, including two Academy awards for Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor.

Here is a movie I will be seeing again, it is worth it.