Little Miss Sunshine
2006 · Directed by Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris
Original language: English
- comedy
- drama
The story
A family loaded with quirky, colorful characters piles into an old van and road trips to California for little Olive to compete in a beauty pageant.
What it’s like
Sun-bleached and scrappy, with the warm, washed-out color of a cheap road trip: the yellow van and faded desert highways glow under flat afternoon light, and the handheld camera stays close to the cramped family in their bench seats and motel rooms. The rhythm is brisk and talky, full of overlapping dialogue and awkward silences, with a bright, acoustic-folk pop score that lifts every bump in the road. The mood is dysfunctional-family comedy with a tender, bruised undertow: cringe-funny moments give way to quiet beats of grief and loneliness, and the people slowly, clumsily learn to show up for one another. Intensity is low: some profanity, crude humor, and suggestive jokes, a drug-related subplot played for laughs, and no real violence. It suits a lazy weekend, a comfort rewatch, or a long drive, and it's for viewers who like warm, sharp-edged ensemble comedies about imperfect families who keep piling back into the van together.
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