What I admire most about Little Miss Sunshine is it pulls no punches. It flies in the face of modern day – ’emotionally correct’ Hollywood filmmaking. In some sense, the whole movie is a reflection of 7-year-old Olive Hoover’s outlook on life. She’s courageous and follows her passion of wanting to be a beauty queen despite the push – back from ‘society’ (the Super Ego), specifically her ‘suitability’ to contest; considering she doesn’t ‘seemingly’ possess or exude conventional beauty pageant traits.
As the movie unfolds; we witness how Olive’s drive and belief in herself challenges the adults around her; who all think (apart from the mother, wonderfully played by one of my favourite Australian actresses – Toni Collete) they are intelligent and have the formula on ‘life’. But in fact, compared to Olive – they are broken and teetering on the edge of their own precipices. Over time because of Olive’s courage, outlook and actions, the adults’ question and challenge their individual modus operandi and worldviews and their behaviours and perspectives on life change as a result. It’s kind of a form of indirect ‘Ontological Shock’.
More than anything, 7-year-old Olive Hoover wants to be a beauty queen. When she qualifies for the prestigious Little Miss Sunshine beauty contest, the entire family embarks on a long road trip from Albuquerque to California in their 1978 Volkswagen Station Wagon Type 2. However, the journey is anything but smooth. As Sheryl, Olive’s overworked mother, struggles to be the voice of reason, Richard, her unsuccessful husband, tries to promote his self-help program. To further complicate matters, Dwayne, Sheryl’s son from a previous marriage, has decided not to utter a word until he joins the Air Force Academy. At least, troubled Uncle Frank just tags along. And on the road to success, anything that can go wrong will go wrong. What has the future in store for Olive? Does she stand a chance of fulfilling her dream?
Anyone who hasn’t seen Little Miss Sunshine but wants a small taste of its approach and method, I have presented a clip below from the dinner scene. When I watched this scene again while preparing this article; what impressed me so much was its attention to detail, especially the mannerisms / nuances in each performance and the impact of uncomfortable pauses / silences. Check out how Greg Kinnear’s character receives Frank and consider the pause here: ‘Good…. (pause) to see you‘. Do you really think his character is happy to see Frank?
The choice of shots in editing are standouts here as well. For example, something so seemingly inconsequential like when Steve Carell’s character picks up the ‘McDonalds glass’. You don’t have to be told what he’s thinking – you know it as he is looking at it and pondering the ‘whole meaning – thing’. Silent reflection can be more impactful than words. This movie treats its characters and audience with a lot of respect and that can only be a good thing.
The following are excerpts from the Wikipedia reference below:
Little Miss Sunshine is a 2006 American tragicomedy road film and the feature film directorial debut of the husband–wife team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. Little Miss Sunshine was a box office success, earning $101 million, and was praised mainly for the performances, direction, screenplay and humor. The film garnered four nominations at the 79th Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Michael Arndt and Alan Arkin won Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor, respectively.
References:
1. Little Miss Sunshine – Wikipedia
2. Little Miss Sunshine – IMDB
“The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.”- Michel Legrand
Observation Blogger 
Olive and the grandfather…loved the relationship between the two. The ending…was so great. I like the simple things also like the running gag of the VW bus…having to push it off to start it.
It took me so long to get round to seeing it, but I’m sure glad I did. I like your observations about the car and the relationship of Olive and the grandfather. Cheers Max.
Hilarious. I remember this movie, never watched it. I will now. I needed this laugh!
I hope you get round to seeing it friend. Let me know what you think. I was trying to find it last night and show it to my kids, but no luck. I’ll just have to wait until it arrives on cable again and the stars are in alignment.
A brilliant and hilarious film, one of my favorites of the past 20 years.
I already want to see it again, but this time with the family – as I mentioned above. I can see how it could make a lot of favourite lists over the last 20 years. Thanks for chiming in Jeff.
We are at loggerheads on ‘Silver Linings Playbook’ like we are with Russell’s ‘American Hustle’ and some of Christopher Nolan’s movies inc. ‘Origen’ and ‘Dunkirk’ . I don’t like when I feel the director imprints his stamp so much on a movie, in place of story line and character development. This happened with Tarantino in his later movies when his material became a parody quagmire of his former modus operando. Too smart for their own good. But I did enjoy Russel’s ‘Fighter’ with Bale and Mark Wahlberg.
I didn’t like anything about it. And when they used Dylan’s Girl from the North Country I nearly threw up. Haha. Horses for courses.