For the record…
I hated Little Miss Sunshine.
Taavo and I had a discussion yesterday that started timidly, but progressed into full-on loathing about the film. Sometimes you have to suss out where your friends stand on things first; don’t want to go shitting all over someone’s favorite film.
Taavo: “So… have you seen Little Miss Sunshine?”
Me: “Yeah. I didn’t like it very much.”
Taavo: “I hated it.”
Me: “Oh, good. Me, too.”
This launched us into a discussion of the major failings of the film. Taavo chose the big picture, and saw it as a document to be used for later generations to prove the decline of American culture. As I’m wont to do, I picked apart the writing, characters, and situations depicted in the film.
Jeremy actually liked it, and was a bit taken aback by my vitriolic diatribe about it in the car last night. It wasn’t that I can’t enjoy anything, as Jeremy implied. Quite to the contrary, I expected to really like this film. The cast is great and the trailer seemed funny. I couldn’t have been more disappointed, when, halfway through the film, I had the the intense desire to walk out. I was further disappointed that this desire was stymied by the fact that I was with five other people.
Here, without giving away the plot, are my major problems with the film:
- It seems like it wants to be either a National Lampoons film or a Todd Solondz film (Welcome to the Dollhouse, Happiness), but doesn’t have the zaniness of the former or the soul-crushing depth of the latter. The characters’ reactions to situations in the film veer wildly between the two extremes, proving ineffectual at both.
- The characters themselves are only represented by their problems/dreams. Steve Carell is depressed, the son is silent in homage to Nietzsche and wants to be a fighter pilot for the navy (because those two things go together obviously), Greg Kinnear has his program, Alan Arkin has a dirty mouth, mind, and drug habit, and Toni Collette… wait….
- Toni Collette serves no purpose in the film. Unlike the other characters who at least have an arc or desire, Collette’s character’s only purpose seems to be to a shrill harpy who doesn’t support her husband, vaguely cares for her children’s aspirations, and shares winking sarcasms with her brother about her husband and family. She appears to have no goals of her own other than anger and reluctant participation. Aside from the seven-year old, she is only female character in the film. Oh wait, there’s also the bitchy pageant woman. See where I’m going with this?
- No average human (let alone a seven year old girl or the 72-year old Arkin) can run 15-20 mph.
- Everything in the film is just a set-up for a later joke or the smarmy finale. Why would the family choose to drive the creaking VW bus to California? It seems like it would only break down in a series of comical mishaps. Oh wait.
- Why, at the end of the film, is no one disturbed by the secret talent sessions between Grandpa and Olive? What the fuck?
- If I had just slit my wrists and was wearing bandages around them, I would certainly roll my sleeves up to my elbows, putting my self-inflicted injury in plain sight of all. This, coupled with my baleful expression, would remind the audience of my depression, and set up a tragicomic scene in a gas station quick mart!
- Everything after the scene in the hospital, which is when I wanted to walk out.
- Olive, despite being quite cute and obviously charming, would never have made it to this competiton. No reasonable parent, having seen the other participants, would groom their child so inappropriately, even if they chose to let her participate in a competition for which she was so ill-suited.
- I have more, but am trying not to totally reveal all of the plot points.
If you’re going to try to make a film that revels in discomfort, you actually have to revel in it. The message of this film seems to be, “Despite your crushing failure, just be plucky.” That message is not instructive in terms of the National Lampoons film, the Solondz film, or the middling effort it seems to be. It pulls its punches on both the comic and the tragic levels and instead gets nowhere.
I just don’t understand why this film has gotten such stellar reviews. Nathan Rabin of the Onion’s AV Club can always be counted on to call a spade a spade, but his review of the film is pretty glowing:
Little Miss Sunshine abandons its commitment to low-key naturalism for a goofy, far-fetched, crowd-pleasing climax. But by that point, the film has earned its laughs by making the audience care about characters who begin the film as broad comic types, but end it as sympathetic, fully formed, multidimensional human beings.
Maybe this is just the little-Sundance-movie-that-could syndrome or maybe I’m insane. I’m not usually this much of a culture snob, and I’m not usually this far off on a movie the (rational) critics think is great. This movie was ba-bad-bad. Why is it so beloved?
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