Little Miss Sunshine
Mar. 6th, 2007 05:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spankerellaOh how I adore this film.
Everyone just fit so well. Abigail Breslin was so adorable. I loved Alan Arkin. I can see now why he won the Oscar for this. He was brilliant and playing a pretty unlikeable guy. Well, until Olive asked him if she was a loser and he gave that little speech about real losers being people who were afraid to try.
I loved Steve Carell. What a down-and-out guy. His delivery of lines about what led to his suicide should not have been funny, considering the subject matter, but it WAS!
I loved Paul Dano as Dwayne. The notepad. The non-speak. The "I hate everyone", "Don't Kill yourself tonight", "Welcome to hell", and "Go hug Mom". His freak-out at the end when he discovers that he's colorblind. I love that after months of silence the first word he screams is fuck. Wonderful. I loved that all it took was Olive hugging him, and he was on the move again.
What seemed utterly brilliant to me is how the yellow VW bus they travelled in was as much a character in the film as any of the actors. I so dug that van. My sides were hurting from laughing about the messed up horn.
The dance scene at the end. OMG! Laughing so hard! It really shouldn't be funny... a little girl doing a striptease to Superfreak at a pageant show, but DAMN, is it funny. She slapped her butt! She had velcro pants. She wore little red panties with ruffles. There was something so cute and innocent about it despite what she was doing because she didn't really realize what she was doing. Olive didn't know the routine that Grandpa had helped her work up was a stripper routine. I loved it when the rest of the family joined her on the stage. I loved that they made sure she got to finish.
My only complaint was that Toni Collette was underused in this. She's way funnier, but I guess someone sort of had to be the straightman in this comedy trip. Greg Kinnear was so over the top, in a good way, that I suppose she balanced him out.
I recommend it. Especially if your family ever loaded you up in a car for roadtrips in the summer. It'll so bring a lot of that back.
Everyone just fit so well. Abigail Breslin was so adorable. I loved Alan Arkin. I can see now why he won the Oscar for this. He was brilliant and playing a pretty unlikeable guy. Well, until Olive asked him if she was a loser and he gave that little speech about real losers being people who were afraid to try.
I loved Steve Carell. What a down-and-out guy. His delivery of lines about what led to his suicide should not have been funny, considering the subject matter, but it WAS!
I loved Paul Dano as Dwayne. The notepad. The non-speak. The "I hate everyone", "Don't Kill yourself tonight", "Welcome to hell", and "Go hug Mom". His freak-out at the end when he discovers that he's colorblind. I love that after months of silence the first word he screams is fuck. Wonderful. I loved that all it took was Olive hugging him, and he was on the move again.
What seemed utterly brilliant to me is how the yellow VW bus they travelled in was as much a character in the film as any of the actors. I so dug that van. My sides were hurting from laughing about the messed up horn.
The dance scene at the end. OMG! Laughing so hard! It really shouldn't be funny... a little girl doing a striptease to Superfreak at a pageant show, but DAMN, is it funny. She slapped her butt! She had velcro pants. She wore little red panties with ruffles. There was something so cute and innocent about it despite what she was doing because she didn't really realize what she was doing. Olive didn't know the routine that Grandpa had helped her work up was a stripper routine. I loved it when the rest of the family joined her on the stage. I loved that they made sure she got to finish.
My only complaint was that Toni Collette was underused in this. She's way funnier, but I guess someone sort of had to be the straightman in this comedy trip. Greg Kinnear was so over the top, in a good way, that I suppose she balanced him out.
I recommend it. Especially if your family ever loaded you up in a car for roadtrips in the summer. It'll so bring a lot of that back.
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no subject
Date: 2007-03-07 05:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-07 03:09 pm (UTC)If you liked the style/humor of this movie, you might also like "Happy Texas" if you haven't seen it. Also kinda quirky off-beat. :D
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Date: 2007-03-07 05:04 pm (UTC)OMG, that scene at the pageant where they were all dancing to "Super Freak" was the best - I thought, yes, that's what they are: a bunch of misfits, but they belong together, they back each other up, and they love each other for who they are. They are, above all, a family. :) I will definitely be watching it again.
Man, Alan Arkin totally rocks. Now I need to rent one of his earlier movies, "Wait Until Dark." He's creepy-good in it. ^_^