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There aren't too many sunny dispositions in Little Miss Sunshine, for its protagonists, the Hoover family, are a gloriously ill-at-ease and mismatched bunch. That said, this hugely enjoyable film is one of those character-based, beautifully written and acted American independents where the more dysfunction and gloom on display, the more we laugh. The Hoovers really do give the Addams Family a run for their money. First there's dad Richard (Greg Kinnear), a struggling motivational speaker, whose forced optimism grates with his clan, and is in stark contrast to the ‘pro-honesty’ stance of his wife Sheryl (Toni Collette), a woman who thinks nothing of discussing suicide at the dinner table with her 7 year-old daughter. Then there's teenager Dwayne, a Nietzsche-reading misanthrope a year into a self-imposed vow of silence; Sheryl's brother Frank (Steve Carrell), recently dislodged as ‘the premier Proust scholar in the US’, whose slit wrists are debated over the fried chicken supper, and Richard's father (Arkin), a scabrous septuagenarian addicted to porn and heroin.
‘Grandpa’ has been helping the family's youngest, Olive, prepare her choreography for the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant. But who is to take her to California, when so many adults are too feeble to be left behind? The Hoovers agree, begrudgingly, that they should all pile into the decrepit VW camper van for the trip west.
The best road movies combine incident with involving characters, whose self-knowledge develops en route. This doesn't disappoint in either regard. The Hoovers' journey is bookended by an unexpected death (its consequences both poignant and slapstick) and the climactic pageant, a hilarious event during which grandpa's demented inspiration and refreshing disregard for convention are revealed.
Of a terrific cast, Carell and Arkin shade the honours, the one beautifully eking out the detail of an introverted man painfully returning to life, the other larger than life. Paradoxically, Grandpa's rebellious ways reflect a man profoundly at ease with himself (he's only shooting up because he figures he might as well go out on a high) and whose unconventional wiles will have a profound effect on his family's collective psyche.

 

Demetrios Matheou on 18th December 2006
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