Little Miss Sunshine

This entry was posted by jon on Wednesday, December 20th, 2006 at 12:28 pm.

What makes a movie about failed dreams, homosexuality, suicide, death, and pre-teen beauty pageants so goddamn funny?

The answer is in the execution. First of all, like good movies and good visiting relatives, Little Miss Sunshine knows just how long to stick around. At at just over 90 minutes, everyone involved works perfectly to pack maximum laughs into the time allotted.

Greg Kinnear, Steve Carell, and Alan Arkin are a comedy lover’s dream, and each turns in his best performance in years. Of course, Carell hasn’t had the film experience of the others, so his melancholy-yet-hilarious turn as gay uncle Frank, the preeminent Proust scholar in the world (he won’t let anyone forget it, either), becomes career-defining. Toni Collette, too, is the perfect mom who does her best to hold things together, and like the movie itself, her performance is sweet without causing a toothache.

Choice quotes: “Let’s all pretend to be normal here” and “Sarcasm is the refuge of losers.” Without giving away too much, let me just say that we are all superfreaks, and the winners among us are those who learn to let our freak flags fly with pride. This one’s a keeper.

A+