Little Miss Sunshine is about your regular middle class family: a druggie grandpa (Alan Arkin), a suicidal gay uncle (Steven Carell), a Nietzsche fan who is antisocial (Paul Dano), and a mom who tries to keep everybody together (Toni Collette). Not to mention a dad whose dream is to become a motivational speaker (Greg Kinnear), and a little girl named Olive (Abigail Breslin) who wants to win the Little Miss Sunshine beauty contest in California.
Together, this quasi-dysfunctional family hops into an old VW mini bus with a broken shift and drives from Albuquerque, New Mexico, passes under the Loop 101 overpass near 27th Avenue and Beardsley and heads to California.
Like any road picture, the drive is long and the radio only is entertaining through the first state. When the eerie silence and the mundane scenery of desert sets in, the family deals with loss, emotionally traumatic discussions and verbal fights, small talk, epiphanies, and revelations.
There is an awkward scene where Olive's dad lectures her on why she shouldn't eat a scoop of ice cream because other beauty pageant girls don't, but she later finds out that one of her biggest influences, Miss California, loves to eat more than your regular vanilla and chocolate. You can't help, but root for the little girl.
You still root for Olive when she finally enters the competition and is matched up against six-year-old girls that are skinny as tooth picks, air brushed as if they were cover girl models, and wear clothes that yell out, "future stripper." Yes, the beauty pageant with all of its build-up is satirically funny, but you can't help but feel sad for these girls.
Was this how Jon Benet was treated before she died? Whereas people have all of their own opinions on what happened to her, Little Miss Sunshine points out that anybody can watch these beauty pageants, even a male derelict who has nothing better to do than watch a six-year-old girl dance in a skimpy two piece. That's more disturbing than funny.
I give Little Miss Sunshine *** out of 5 Roses.
Reach the reporter at monis.rose@asu.edu.
