Flick of The Day: Little Miss Sunshine

It is a rare enough thing to come across a film that you see without any preconceptions or expectations. It is rarer still for such a film to be joyously fantastic with every frame from beginning to end. Little Miss Sunshine is such a film and remains a personal favourite some 7 years after I first encountered it. It combines a quirky tale of modern family life with a diverse and vibrant cast of characters. It's funny, sad, and wickedly life affirming throughout.

Sheryl, the divine Toni Collette, is an overburdened mother in Albuquerque, where she lives with her precocious daughter Olive played by the excellent Abigail Breslin, her delightfully huffy and unhappy in the way only teenagers can be son Dwayne, played by Paul Dano and her husband Richard, a self help guru with a clue played by the always watch-able Greg Kinnear. The family is rounded out by Grandpa Edwin, a foul mouthed Alan Arkin who enjoys snorting heroin and speaking his mind. Into this family unit steps Sheryl's brother Frank played by Steve Carell, the nations foremost Proust scholar who has recently attempted suicide and needs a place to stay. Olive has been prepping for her upcoming début as a beauty queen in the Little Miss Sunshine pageant. Due to a series of complications, the family are forced to set out across the country in a yellow VW bus to reach the pageant in Redondo beach, California.  Despite each having their own problems and goals, they band together to get Olive to her goal. Dwayne has taken a vow of silence until he becomes a test pilot, Richard is trying to sell his self-help programme and Frank is struggling with depression.

 The real strength of the movie is Michael Arndt's script which is just packed with humour and carries and emotional punch not often seen in an ostensibly comic film. He creates a world and a cast of character that are a pleasure to spend time with. The dialogue ebbs and flows with a ring of authenticity, and the stellar cast reflects this quality. As an ensemble, the cast are very well chosen. There are no weak performances but a special mention must go to Alan Arkin who is superb as Edwin. 

From the opening sequence where the various characters are introduced at a family dinner, there is a sense that everyone has a real purpose and motivation in the story and that their actions which may seem random will eventually pay off at the story's denouement. Making this effort to ensure that the audience knows and likes the characters is time well spent before we set off on our road trip across the south-west United States. The various foibles of the cast are ripe for comedy and this is a very  funny film. The humour is carefully balanced with the emotional depth of real human drama. These are real people not comic caricatures.

A superb film, from beginning to end the script is packed with humour and pathos. The ensemble cast are perfectly chosen and play their parts with an obvious love for the role. Even the soundtrack with cuts from Devotchka and Sufjan Stevens is apt. If you haven't seen this film yet, you really should.

Flick of The Day: Ghost Town

It would be fair to say that the romantic comedy has a bad reputation, much of it rightly earned. It is often the victim of lazy filmmaking, of big name actors phoning in a performance and of studios eager for a money spinner. However it is a genre with a fine history stretching back to the dawn of cinema. From the timeless It Happened One Night to Billy Wilder's Sabrina and Woody Allen's Annie Hall, it has always been a genre rich in talent and it is only recently that it has become a watch word for mediocrity. Today's flick of the day, Ghost Town, is the exception that proves the rule.

Ghost Town

Ricky Gervais, one of the latest in a grand history of British comedians to seek his fortune on the big screen makes a very fine debut in his first Hollywood role as Bertram Pincus, a dentist with a loathing for his fellow man. He is uniformly nasty to all who have the misfortune to cross his path. Gervais plays an insufferable prick to a tee. While in hospital for a routine operation, Bertram dies (briefly) on the operating table, and when he gets home he realizes that something is amiss. People follow him everywhere, asking him for help with their problems. It soon becomes apparent that Bertram can see and communicate with the dead and he is none too pleased.  Bertram thankfully has the recently deceased Greg Kinnear on hand to guide him through the spirit world. Kinnear excels as a womanising cad, who feels he has unfinished business. He convinces Pincus to intercede with his grieving wife, the lovely Tea Leoni, and break up her relationship with her new beau, ostensibly because Kinnear believes him to be a gold digger. Of course this is just a way for him to stay involved in his widow's life. Ultimately, Pincus has to find redemption and come to the realisation that life is their to be led not stored up.

What separates this film from the chaff, apart from the fine performances of the leads is the heart at the centre of this story and the fact that it is told with more then a degree of soul. It gets to the heart of the matter and is far more substantial a story then it seems at first. In any one else's hands, the role of Bertram Pincus would be an easy hate figure, but Gervais is a fine talent and he creates a sympathetic figure. It becomes obvious as the film goes one that Bertram is not alone by choice and that his hatred of the world as he holes up in his New York apartment stems from loss. His heart has been hardened and the film is as much about his opening up as anything else.

A simple and familiar tale then, told with panache and well acted characters. There is a lot to like here and I am sure anyone who sees it will leave the cinema feeling better, if only a little. There are some great funny lines in the film and Gervais and his fellow cast exploit them for all their worth.

Bertram Pincus: Dr. Prashar - you're from a... scary country, right? 

[pause] 

Dr. Prashar: I'm from India... 

Bertram Pincus: But, you're not... Christian, like us? 

[pause] 

Dr. Prashar: I'm a Hindu... 

Bertram Pincus: Yeah. So, um, how would you extract information from a hostile? 

Dr. Prashar: Well... as a... Hindu person... I would just... ask him... politely..

A very fine film from director David Koepp with some great performances and as I said a great deal of heart which helps it to rise above so many so-so romantic comedies. Well worth a look.