Little Miss Sunshine Photo

Little Miss Sunshine

Starring: Abigail Breslin, Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, Steve Carell

Directed by: Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris Fox

RS: 4of 4 Stars Average User Rating: 3.5of 4 Stars

Call this one the little movie that could. Last January, it charmed everyone at the Sundance Film Festival and was sold to Fox Searchlight for a record $10.5 million. This January, the feature debut of directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, boasting a worldwide gross of $83 million on a puny $8 million budget, could find itself among the five Oscar nominees for Best Picture. How'd that happen? Audiences saw it and talked about it. With the release of the DVD, the talk should rise to a fever pitch. And all this for a movie that sounds like nothing more than a formula farce about a dysfunctional family from New Mexico that hops in a VW bus and heads to California, where seven-year-old Olive (Abigail Breslin) will enter the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant and teach her elders what really matters in life.

Heartwarming? Nah. These family members are way too screwed up to be sappy; that's what makes them memorable. Besides Breslin, there's Greg Kinnear as Dad, a motivational speaker nearing meltdown, and Mom is the superb Toni Collette, just the actress to expose the fissures in a marriage with a glance. Along for the ride are Paul Dano as their alienated teen son, Alan Arkin as Dad's junkie father and a deadpan-hilarious Steve Carell as Mom's brother, a Proust scholar who's been suicidal since his stud boyfriend dumped him.

Instead of yuck, we get something yummy: a scrappy human comedy that takes an honest path to laughs and is twice as funny and touching for it. First-time screenwriter Michael Arndt is a name worth remembering. And directors Dayton and Faris Ñ their background is in music videos Ñ avoid flash to get close to the places in the heart that bruise. Their debuts are more than promising, and listening to their DVD audio commentary on the agony of bringing this "little" comedy to the screen is an object lesson on why Hollywood sucks.

DVD EXTRAS There's not much in the bonus-feature department, just a music video ("Till the End of Time," by DeVotchka) and four alternate endings, only one of which, shot at a roadside picnic, would have been a complete disaster.

PETER TRAVERS

(Posted: Dec 15, 2006)

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Give us your review of
Little Miss Sunshine

Review 1 of 7

4of 4 Stars

Quite possibly my favorite movie of 2006, LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE is a moving, funny, sweet movie. Albeit a rather unoriginal plot, the movie succeeds on every level, well-written, well-acted and directed, unsuccumbing to the typical and untypical cliches that are abound in the family comedys, human dramas. I loved this movie! A+

Dec 1, 2007 15:08:21

Review 2 of 7

4of 4 Stars

Little Miss Sunshine delivers what (most) any moviegoer wants: quality. The scenes in this movie are original and funny at the same time.

Aug 6, 2007 20:37:41

Review 3 of 7

2of 4 Stars

Was I the only one that found "Little Miss Sunshine" disappointing? Maybe if it hadn't been so worked up as the ONE movie to see, or if all my friends hadn't told me that it was so intricate and complex. I feel like the only reason people say they like this movie is because it was meant to be complex, it was meant to have meaning, and saying you don't like it could mean you're scrutinized as not being a "modern intellectual thinker". This movie was just too worked up, everyone tried to hard to make it work, and it led to a major cinematic disappointment.

Jul 19, 2007 11:23:36

Review 4 of 7

4of 4 Stars

Little Miss Sunshine brings together everything a moviegoer craves when they get bundled up to go see an independent film at their local Regal, AMC, et cetera. It's hailed as a comedy, and boy does it deliver in that respect. Little Miss Sunshine features every type of laugh available to homosapiens; it's got chuckles, giggles, jokes that force a single "ha(!)," and a number of absolute gut busters to top it all of like free sprinkles on two scoops of ice cream. But don't judge this movie as just another well done comedy i.e. Wedding Crashers and Office Space; Little Miss Sunshine has what both of those excellent films lack: Heart. Little Miss Sunshine tugs just as much on the heart strings as is does on the funny bones in the viewer's body, but while you are in mourning after a fairly touching scene, Little Miss Sunshine's writers lift everyone's spirits by using the particularly painful scenario as a spring board for more of the laugh-out-loud comedy it will be remembered for.

Verdict: You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll love this movie.

Jan 19, 2007 14:00:52

Review 5 of 7

3of 4 Stars

"Little Miss Sunshine" is one of the best films of the summer. This movie is very layered and the subtle humor is refreshing compared to the more known "in your face" comedy thrown right at us these days.Appropriately,as the Spin Doctors would say: "Little miss, little miss, little miss can't be wrong".

Jan 14, 2007 00:36:10

Review 6 of 7

1of 4 Stars

Its hypocritical Mr. Travers how you jumped on the bandwagon, and rated this rubbish four stars which in the summer you only rated it three stars. You have no crediblity, its sad how you put this film on your top-ten over true indies like "Old Joy", and "Half Nelson". Its funny how a movie that's forced, overly precious, and tries way to hard at being offbeat and quirky can be four stars. "Little Miss Sunshine" is so unwatchable!

Dec 24, 2006 18:57:09

Review 7 of 7

1of 4 Stars

Its hypocritical Mr. Travers how you jumped on the bandwagon, and rated this rubbish four stars which in the summer you only rated it four stars. You have no crediblity, its sad how you put this film on your top-ten over true indies like "Old Joy", and "Half Nelson".

Dec 24, 2006 18:48:05

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