Little Miss Sunshine

USA, 2006

101 min.

Directors: Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris

Writer: Michael Arndt

Cast: Abigail Breslin, Greg Kinnear, Paul Dano, Toni Collette

        I don’t know how to review a movie that ends with a 12-year old girl stripping without getting fired. It’s just not something my sense of humor and writing style are built to deal with. I feel out of place, ill equipped, boorish and clunky, like a bull in a china shop, a girlfriend in a comic store, or a music critic at a Phish concert.

I could focus on Little Miss Sunshine’s intuitive understanding of one of the fundamental rules of film comedy, which is that the strongest comedies are simply dramas populated with funny characters. This allows the story to develop organically, as opposed to lurching from joke to joke like a drunken Pauley Shore, endless searching for a way to raise the bar of semen-related humor set by the Farrelly Brothers. In Michael Arndt’s fine script, the streamlined plot takes us on a road trip to a beauty pageant, as a family travels to California to enter their vaguely porcine daughter in the titular contest. I could probably mention that the film takes its time to establish both the characters and the story before the humor really takes hold, and that this is the hallmark of a truly well constructed comedy. But, unavoidably, that fact that the story does lead to the aforementioned pre-pubescent strip tease would inevitably lead to my recounting of several anecdotes and jokes with similar endings, and my brief tenure here would come to an end.

I could mention how well the performance carry a film that could so easily have turned into a desperate attempt to finance Chevy Chase’s cocaine addiction with a fourth National Lampoon sequel. Steve Carrell seems to understand deadpan better than anyone since Buster Keaton blinked into a camera lens for 12 minutes during The General, and Alan Arkin manages to turn in a keening, shrill performance with just enough pathos to evoke sympathy instead of shaken baby syndrome. Greg Kinnear proves why he keeps getting cast in comedies instead of nothing, and Paul Dano, who despite appearances is not one of the guys from My Chemical Romance, gives a strong performance despite being silent for two-thirds of the picture. His mix of teenage angst and bad skin makes him perfect teen idol material, though I fear his talent will lead him either to a drug overdose outside the Viper Room or a Sunny Day Real Estate cover band. I could say all those, but the list of performers would soon draw me back to Abigail Breslin, the tiny actress who may not be the star of the picture, but certainly is its shining, butter-clogged heart. She’s cute, talented, and her third act dance would normally cause me to formulaically fill in a third, wholly inappropriate adjective in this sentence, were I not avoiding shock humor like the plague.

I will, however, say that the film is enjoyable and funny, despite my aversion to anything that was a smash hit at Sundance. There was a time when Sundance was an important springboard for real independent film instead of a place you go to ski and lay starlets between press conferences, but that time has passed.  Nowadays, it’s a refuge for Miramax films and vanity projects from Hollywood stars, functioning only as a getaway for film critics to practice working the words ‘quirky’ ‘character-driven’ and ‘dysfunctional family’ into fawning reviews while they try to score gift baskets from after parties. Nevertheless, Little Miss Sunshine proves that there’s still something beneath the surface of Sundance, comedy, and that 12-year old’s schoolgirl uniform. See you in the unemployment line.

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