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: For Ellen

Paul Dano is one of the best young actors working in Hollywood at the moment. I first saw him in the excellent Little Miss Sunshine as the misanthropic angst ridden teen Dwayne. Since then he starred opposite Daniel Day Lewis in Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood in the duel roles of Paul and Eli Sunday. He was last seen on Irish screen's in last year's Looper with Joseph Gordon Levitt. Today's flick sees him playing the aimless Joby Taylor, an indie rocker with a young daughter he has never met in So Yong Kim's subdued drama.

Joby is the misanthropic lead singer of a band that appears to be struggling for survival though this is only hinted at. We meet him as he drives through the night after a gig to meet his lawyer to finalise his divorce. His lawyer Fred, played by Jon Heder of Napoleon Dynamite fame, is equally unsure of himself in the world but in a much different way. He lives at home with his mother and some of the funniest scenes involve the interplay between the mismatched pair. Joby is on the point of signing the divorce papers when he realises that he is signing away his right to see his daughter Ellen. Though he has never met Ellen, played by a precocious Shaylena Mandigo, he tries to make contact and create a bond. The scenes shared between the two are touching and filled with hope of a better relationship. Yet time and again Joby is unable to deal with his own problems. Ultimately he wants to do what is best for his daughter regardless of what that might mean for him. Will he continue to run away or will he face up to his responsibilities?

There is a sparse quality to the snow filled scenery of the small town in which Joby finds himself and its empty loneliness reflects his mood. It is obvious he is not a bad guy just immature and unable to function outside of his own little world as a touring musician. It is obvious that Joby felt that the years he put in as an aspiring rock star in LA would pay off and that as he drifts toward his late 20's it may not happen. At one point he justifies his absence to Ellen by saying that he couldn't give up his record deal. He now has a second chance whether he will take it or not is thrust of the film.

While it is an interesting story to tell at first, the film is ultimately not fully satisfying because by the end Joby has made no real progress as a human being. The world is filled with bad parents why should Joby's tale be any more compelling?