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film: Little Miss Sunshine
director: Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris
cast: Toni Collette, Steve Carell, Abigail Breslin
Fox Searchlight Pictures / 2006 / 102 min
score: 77
< click to learn more
by Tim Mathiesen
Nominated: Best Pitcure / Best Supporting Actress (Abigail Breslin)
Possibly the most talked about comedy of the year, this movie was incredibly misunderstood. "Little Miss Sunshine"
has broken new ground in the movie world by being one of the first comedy based films to be nominated
for Best Picture at the Academy Awards in many many years. Though it did not diserve this honor it may
have broken new ground in mainstream movie making. The fact that an independent film created so much hype
and praise by the general public may force film studios to take a second look at the pile of scripts
on their desk and think "quality" not "quantity."
The problem is that people don't realize their views are changing which caused the extreme popularity of
"Little Miss Sunsine" to backfire after a few months due to the high expectations by later viewers.
Due to being labeled as a comedy, audiences came expecting humor in the way of "European Vacation" and
"Dumb and Dumber" which is not at all the purpose of "Little Miss Sunshine." This film is more of a
dramedy in the way that very little of the movie causes the viewer to actually laugh out loud. Much of the
film's quality lies in the character building and the relationships between the family members. Each
member of the family has a personal struggle that they are dealing with and the way to get through those
struggles is for the family to open up and work together. The humor is found in the subtle events
along the way that result from the conflict and love between the characters.
The film is a step in the right direction for Hollywood, but not as good as it was hyped up to be.
It just happened to be in the right place at the right time. It happened to mix the right amount of
artistic quality along with the right amount of mainstream attraction to build a bridge between the
world of serious artistic film making and summer blockbusters. Hopefully something good will come out
of this open door and we'll stop seeing high budget, low quality, mindless blockbuster comedies from the Wayans brothers.
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