LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE [review]

Olive [crying]: Grandpa, am I pretty?
Grandpa: You are the most beautiful girl in the world.
Olive: You’re just saying that.
Grandpa: No! I’m madly in love with you and it’s not because of your brains or your personality.

Somewhere toward the middle of the Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris directed film Little Miss Sunshine, the extremely dysfunctional Hoover family learns from a mechanic in a middle-of-nowhere town that the VW bus they are using to get from New Mexico to California has a busted clutch.

“I’ll tell you something,” says the mechanic in his thick implacable accent, consoling the family obviously at wit’s end, “with these old buses you don’t need a clutch to shift from third gear to fourth. Just make sure you start off on a hill in third gear, give a push to get it rolling at good speed, then hop in.”

The busted clutch serves as a metaphor for the Hoovers’ lives, and the bus on the hill with them all in at, as the predetermined trajectory the film will follow.

Little Miss Sunshine opens at the top of the hill in third gear with Uncle Frank being picked up from the hospital by his concerned sister Sheryl Hoover. Because he is recovering from attempted suicide he volunteers to loving imprisonment by his sister and her family: Her husband, Richard Hoover, a failing motivational speaker; her teen son, Dwayne, an angst-ridden teen that doesn’t speak because of a personal vow he made; her foul mouthed father-in-law, Grandpa Hoover, who was kicked out of his nursing home for snorting heroine; and Olive, her pudgy seven-year-old daughter who has aspirations of being a child beauty pageant winner.

Olive Hoover, the film’s central character, is a child trapped in a dysfunctional adult world. She mimes the videotaped actions of Miss America pageant winners - the palms on the cheeks in mock surprise, the air kissing, the lash batting. She bares witness to Uncle Frank’s suicide confession over a dinner of “goddamn fucking chicken” and salad. Her dad scolds her for ordering waffles � la mode because if she eats ice cream she’ll be fat. And is a noble subject to grandpa, who secretly has not given up his heroine habit, as he serves as her private coach for her beauty pageant dance routine.

The members of the Hoover family all hop into this cinematic vehicle as it rolls downhill and attempts to answer the question I imagine bewildered writer Michael Ardnt: “How bad can this really get?” This film surprises the audience with unexpected results as viewers find themselves laughing hysterically at despair, being angry at humor, and ridden with anxiety when the onscreen characters are in their most relaxed states.

When the film crashes, and it does so repeatedly, singular characters are flung from the Hoover bus and must initially face their pain alone. But as they lay mangled on the side of life’s highway the loving family members are always close at hand to offer comfort and tend to the emotional bruises.

Ensconced in this familial malady is the tiny Olive Hoover who throughout the bulk of the film is made to bare witness as members of her family smash into the various obstacles life throws at them. Her innocence, which serves as a fragile protective exterior within the larger erring vehicle, is repeatedly dented and scratched, and at times she is even called upon to nurse wounded relatives.

Though innocent, Olive is not saved from harm as Ardnt places her squarely in the driver’s seat of the film’s final fender bender. The movie is by this point careening out of control, yet Olive enters this climactic scene without wearing her seatbelt.

Olive: I’d like to dedicate this to my grandpa, who taught me all of my moves.
Pageant Official Jenkins: Aw that’s sweet, honey. Where’s your grandpa?
Olive: In the trunk of our car.

This is the bottom of the hill, the point at which the gear shifting mechanism is no longer functional and the characters can do nothing to alter their momentum other than to throw themselves headlong into the obstacles that pop up like construction cones along the manic freeway of life.

Will the pudgy Olive Hoover be crowned Little Miss Sunshine as she competes against a gaggle of big-haired, lipstick-wearing, ultra-tanned adolescents? Will the secret performance Grandpa has coached her through win over judges and audience members alike?

The answer to these questions will not be revealed in this review, but rest assured that when it is all over, Olive comes out unscathed, saved by her family of airbags. She exits the whole fiasco feeling accomplished as the Hoovers pick up the pieces of their family auto, stick them together with gumption and roll it over the next dip.

The audience leaves the film with the understanding that what was the bottom of the hill in this cinematic snapshot was simply a bump in the road for the Hoovers.

Little Miss Sunshine is a must-see, hilarious masterpiece that teaches good old “goddamn fucking” family values.

+ also published on the PixelSurgeon website