Little Miss Sunshine

[nisaa]

I just watched it for the first time. I can't say enough about it, only that it's one of the best movies I've seen in a long time. It had everything from the VW microbus that's falling apart to the crazy heroin-snorting grandpa to the brother who's taken a vow of silence and hates everybody. Above all, it had the Little Girl Who Could.



It'll be that movie I'll tell friends to watch when they're down because this will encourage them not to give up on their dreams. It'll be the movie I'll show my husband because there are so many things that are true in it about Southern California on a little beauty pageant scale. It says a lot about the crazy things this society wants little girls to believe about beauty (like eating a little ice cream will make you fat). And it's about the innocent little girl from New Mexico who followed her dream and danced her heart out.

And the thing about this movie is that the characters were real. There wasn't any sugar coating but the film made you smile even at the end. And guess what? On some level, all of the characters failed. Uncle Frank tried to commit suicide but survived. Grandpa snorted himself to death. Dad's book deal fell through. Dwayne won't be able to fly planes because he's color blind. Mom tried desperately to hold the family together by a thread. And Olive didn't win the Little Miss Sunshine pageant. But she got the chance to just be Olive.

I would have called it a "feel good movie" if Olive had won the pageant. I wouldn't have liked that as much. I'm glad the directors didn't take the easy way out on this one. I watched the alternate endings. Thankfully none of them showed Olive winning. Because, you know, it could have been easy for Uncle Frank to become a gay stereotype and help Olive win the competition by doing her hair and makeup, telling her to suck in her gut and making her look like a little drag queen like the rest of the contestants. I'm glad they didn't choose that route either.

Push starting the VW microbus that may or not make it back to Albuquerque and driving off into the sunset? That was the perfect way to end it, in my opinion. I now know why so many people told me "Just see it!" They were right.

Comments

[girlygothic.livejournal.com]

I watched this recently with my parents, and loved it! I think what I liked most about it is that at the begining of the movie I couldn't stand most of the characters. But by the end of it, I loved them all. Not in spite of their flaws, but because of them.

[wishingforrain.livejournal.com]

I am so in love with that movie.