What happens when a family full of losers suddenly has to travel together in a rattling yellow Volkswagen bus? Little Miss Sunshine provides the hilarious answer.
Seven-year-old Olive unexpectedly gets to compete in the “Little Miss Sunshine” beauty pageant in California. Great news? Not really. Dad Richard is a failing motivational speaker. Mom Sheryl has just picked up her suicidal brother Frank from an institution – a Proust expert who just attempted suicide. Teenage brother Dwayne has taken a vow of silence. And grandpa Edwin has been kicked out of his nursing home for heroin use.
But they all go anyway. Because that’s what you do for family, even when you can’t really stand them.
The journey to California becomes a chain of car trouble, personal crises and family feuds. But somewhere along the way something remarkable happens: this dysfunctional bunch actually starts to resemble a family.
The pageant itself is a creepy parade of little girls like plastic dolls, complete with fake teeth and false eyelashes. Their mothers push them like future Olympic champions. Exactly the kind of competitive madness America does so well.
Olive’s performance is… special. Grandpa Edwin has taught her a very particular dance routine. What follows is perhaps the most uncomfortable yet hilarious scene in film history.
Little Miss Sunshine has all the familiar ingredients – dysfunctional family, road trip, lessons about what really matters. But directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris find exactly the right tone. Never too sweet or too cynical. Just real.
Alan Arkin plays the most loveable bastard ever and rightfully won an Oscar for it. Steve Carell shows he can do much more than comedy. And Abigail Breslin steals the show as Olive – authentic, headstrong, and the radiant heart of the film.
The story is about how people who don’t fit together at all can still form a family. How you can love someone even when you sometimes find them unbearable. And how “failure” might just be the most human trait there is.
Little Miss Sunshine is comfort food in film form. And just like real comfort food, it’s perfectly fine that you know what you’re getting.
Please note: this film is part of the Film in de Pluktent programme. Screening starts at 19:15. Ticket: €6. UPDATE: this screening is sold out.
