01/19/2012 (0 of 0 found this helpful)

"Little Miss Sunshine" by Yojimbo

A dysfunctional family go on a road trip from Albuquerque to Redondo Beach to enter their daughter in a beauty pageant. Another one of those quirky to the core indie comedies, Little Miss Sunshine actually has a lot more depth to it than most. It's essentially about the family as a loosely associated group of individuals who somehow manage to live together. Every member of the cast brings a pathos and likeability to their characters in their own particular way, from Greg Kinnear's hilariously desperate motivational speaker, to Steve Carell's suicidal voice of reason to Alan Arkin's to-Hell-with-it-I'm-gonna-die-soon-anyway grandpa. It has loads of laugh out loud moments and a warmth that skillfully manages to sidestep contrived schmaltziness. It all ends up in a genuinely funny parody of ...

Rating of
3.5/4 

06/18/2008 (0 of 0 found this helpful)

Little Miss Sunshine

I cannot say anything bad about this movie- like Juno, it is a quirky movie that does both comedy and drama, and it does them both very well. The dysfunctional Hoover family is made up of a suicidal, gay uncle (Steve Carrell, played when he was almost an unknown), a drug addict, hilarious grandfather (Alan Arkin, who received a Best Actor Oscar win for this role), a housewife mom (Toni Collette), a perfectionalist, motivational speaker- although an unsuccesful one at that- dad (Greg Kinnear), an emo-ish, Neitzsche idolizing brother, Dwayne- and my personal favorite character- who decides to take a vow of silence until he can take flight school- and then of course, we have Olive Hoover (Abigail Breslin- who recieved a Best Actress nod for her role)- who wants to be in the Little Miss Sunsh...

Rating of
4/4 

07/27/2007 (0 of 0 found this helpful)

Everyone, just... pretend to be normal.

I have a hard time not liking any movie that Steve Carell is in these days. He is a brilliant man, and as far as comedy goes he knows his stuff. This movie is great, Greg Kinnear plays the father of a rag tag family that has various quirks. Richard (Kinnear) is a wannabe motivational speaker that is trying to improve the sales of his latest motivational "master piece". His wife Sheryl (Collette) tries to keep their family together but is so frustrated with her husband and nerve- shredded by the stresses of her home that it seems like she will cave in at any moment. Also in the home is Steve's elderly father, who is perpetually profane and angry and copes with the disappointments of his life by snorting heroin. Richard and Sheryl are raising two children, the cute but seemingly unremarkabl...

Rating of
3/4