Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
Directed by Jonathan Dayton
A family loaded with quirky, colorful characters piles into an old van and road trips to California for little Olive to compete in a beauty pageant.
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21 films that influenced Little Miss Sunshine
What critics say influenced Little Miss Sunshine
Sunshine embraces the well-paved comedy road-trip structure with more than one rip-off, er, homage to the classic National Lampoon's Vacation.
Little Miss Sunshine brings to mind one of those National Lampoon's Vacation movies, except this time the family is much more realistic and the tone much darker.
There's even a lengthy sequence that's stolen from "National Lampoon's Vacation" and doesn't fit in this movie at all.
But here we have Little Miss Sunshine, which might aptly be described as "dysfunctional family hits the road," or in other words: National Lampoon's Vacation meets The Squid and the Whale .
I had to miss Sundance this year, so I'm just catching up with Sunshine, which one of its few Sundance naysayers described to me as National Lampoon's Vacation for people who think they're too smart for National Lampoon's Vacation.
Think too much about it, and you’ll realize that in its outline, it’s not exactly full of nothing we haven’t seen before (in fact, it’s kinda an indie-flavored spin on National Lampoon’s Vacation!).
A gentle family satire and a classic American road movie, "Little Miss Sunshine" harks back to the anti-establishment, countercultural comedies of the 1970s such as " Smile " or " Harold and Maude " -- satirical fairy tales that preached the virtues of nonconformity over the superficiality of conventional American values.
A big hit on the film-festival circuit, Sunshine recalls the zany cross-country trek of 1996's quirky Flirting with Disaster.
But while precisely stylized use of the camera evokes a boldness reminiscent of The Graduate or early Woody Allen, endearing moments are the glue holding this frequently cynical movie together.
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If anything, the recent film it most recalls is You Can Count on Me (2000), another small treasure about a fractured family that managed to be moving without troweling on the sap.
Along the way, most of what can go wrong does, and for a while the movie flirts uncomfortably with Weekend at Bernie's territory.
Dayton and Faris' understated, empathetic direction smartly plays against the zaniness of the screenplay; even when it veers into slapstick Weekend At Bernie's territory, the film never loses its grounding in reality.
There are some solid comedic moments: Grandpa's words of wisdom to his mute grandson, practical advice on starting a car with a broken clutch, an encounter with a highway patrolman, and a bit that would be at home in Weekend at Bernie's.
But this is less “The Grapes of Wrath” than “The Grape Nuts of Whimsy,” a perky get-along road laffer, somewhere between the indie-high Sundance festival (where it was a hit) and the bulldozer approach of a “National Lampoon” comedy.
In the time-honored tradition of all-American classics from "The Wizard of Oz" to "The Grapes of Wrath," this latest odyssey puts "Little Miss Sunshine's" fractious family on the road again, bound literally for the Golden State of California -- and figuratively for that golden state of mind, somewhere over the rainbow, where dreams really do come true.
The husband and wife video directing team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (MTV's "The Cutting Edge") make their feature debut with Michael Arndt's 'by the numbers plus quirks' screenplay and knock it out of the park.
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The title of Little Miss Sunshine, like that of 1998's Happiness, serves as a giant flashing sign reading "Danger: Leaden Irony Ahead."
…much like the comedies that came before, "Happy, Texas" (1999) and "Napoleon Dynamite" (2004).
Films like "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," "Napoleon Dynamite" and "Garden State" start out on a few screens and then grow.
Little Miss Sunshine feels a little late to that party, following the trail already blazed by the likes of Sideways and Napoleon Dynamite.