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If there is a certain type of film I tend to look at with a cocked eye and a crooked disposition, it is that type of film which seems to be pushing forward a platform of (to borrow and paraphrase a term from Andrew Sarris) strained quirkiness. It is these kind of films, that try so hard at being fun and quirky, which invariably suffer from lack of anything concrete - cinematically speaking - to take hold of. Sometimes sufferably so (Garden State), sometimes insufferably so (Huckabees), these films, more often than not, will fail. This isnot due to any lack of excitement from the cast, who are usually an unkempt gaggle of talented comedic actors run amok in an obviously obvious scenario (and the cast of this film is none other than exactly that), but mostly because of a sense of odd-for-odd's-sakes characterization. Sort of a false mariah of quirk, never once seeming like legitimate strangeness - a thing that filmmakers ranging from Christopher Guest and Michel Gondry to Jan Svankmajer and David Lynch, have in spades.
Well now, after a slew of these kinds of films, comes Little Miss Sunshine, the story of a functionally dysfunctional family - full of all the just-right stereotypes - traveling to the Little Miss Sunshine pre-teen beauty pageant. The film seems to be stuck somewhere in the no man's land between the legitimate (Junebug) and the illegitimate (My Big Fat Greek Wedding), full of a melancholy moxie that nearly pulls itself off. Of course this has a lot more to do with the cast than with any other aspect of the making of this film - which inevitably plays out in the most predictable of manners.
Putting aside Abigail Breslin, who plays Olive, the adorably precocious little girl who dreams of winning the Little Miss Sunshine crown, and eventually Miss America, for adorably precocious child actors are pretty much a dime-a-dozen in Hollywood, we look at the heart of this film, a pair of mostly underappreciated dramedic actors - Greg Kinnear as Olive's control freak motivational speaker dad, and Steve Carell as the suicidal gay Proustian scholar uncle come back to live aith the family - actually released into his sister's (the queen of quirk Toni Collette) care.
Okay, perhaps Carell isn't exactly underappreciated (he does have both an Emmy and a Golden Globe for The Office), but with a few more roles like this one, where instead of acting funny he just acts - period, he can kiss the so-called "Frat Pack", with its one-note Ferrells, Stillers and Jack Blacks, goodbye - all for (what I have been saying for several years now) a more nuanced maturely funny career, a la Bill Murray and what he has done with his persona in the past decade or so. Of course he still has to get past the inadequacies of lesser films such as what he is surrounded by here.
Aside from the low-brow-trying-to-be-high-brow pretensions of the whole shabang (the typical attempt at an atypical script, the lack of fleshed-out characters, the lack of surprise and the faux whimsy of it all), it is these two actors, along with the uncharacteristicaly multi-faceted characterization that is Alan Arkin's heroin addict grandfather (and talent coordinator for his adorably precocious grandaughter) that give what would otherwise have been yet another example (to harken back to ole Andy Sarris) strained quirkiness, a certain sense of humanity, usually lost in the cracks of such films.
The ultimate saving grace though (and I mean that in the slightest form here) is the finale, where the haplesss family finally arrives at their destination, full of creepy adult-looking Jon Benet Ramsey's parading about in some sort of mock sexuality along the catwalk, and we finally see get to see the dance number that Olive and her Grandfather have been working on. I will not describe it here, not necessarily because it would take away the mystery, but because, unlike anything else in this film, it needs to be seen with your own eyes to be enjoyed properly. Although Little Miss Sunshine may suffer greatly from its strained quirkiness (there's Mr. Sarris rearing his head once more) and even a long bout of tedium, one should at least see the final fifteen minutes - even if you skip the rest of the film.
- August 22, 2006
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