Take a hilarious ride with the Hoovers, one of the most endearingly fractured families in comedy history.
Father Richard (Greg Kinnear) is desperately trying to sell his motivational success program...with no success. Meanwhile, "pro-honesty" mom Sheryl (Toni Collette) lends support to her eccentric family, including her depressed brother (Steve Carell), fresh out of the hospital after being jilted by his lover. Then there are the younger Hoovers?the seven-year-old, would-be beauty queen Olive (Abigail Breslin) and Dwayne (Paul Dano), a Nietzsche-reading teen who has taken a vow of silence. Topping off the family is the foul-mouthed grandfather (Alan Arkin), whose outrageous behavior recently got him evicted from his retirement home. When Olive is invited to compete in the "Little Miss Sunshine" pageant in far-off California, the family piles into their rusted-out VW bus to rally behind her?with riotously funny results.
Pile together a blue-ribbon cast, a screenplay high in quirkiness, and the Sundance stamp of approval, and you've got yourself a crossover indie hit. That formula worked for Little Miss Sunshine, a frequently hilarious study of family dysfunction. Meet the Hoovers, an Albuquerque clan riddled with depression, hostility, and the tattered remnants of the American Dream; despite their flakiness, they manage to pile into a VW van for a weekend trek to L.A. in order to get moppet daughter Olive (Abigail Breslin) into the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant. Much of the pleasure of this journey comes from watching some skillful comic actors doing their thing: Greg Kinnear and Toni Collette as the parents (he's hoping to become a self-help authority), Alan Arkin as a grandfather all too willing to give uproariously inappropriate advice to a sullen teenage grandson (Paul Dano), and a subdued Steve Carell as a jilted gay professor on the verge of suicide. The film is a crowd-pleaser, and if anything is a little too eager to bend itself in the direction of quirk-loving Sundance audiences; it can feel forced. But the breezy momentum and the ingenious actors help push the material over any bumps in the road.-- Robert Horton
Beyond Little Miss Sunshine
More Dysfunctional Family Comedies
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Stills from Little Miss Sunshine
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
Don't waste your time:
A pathetic excuse for entertainment. I was embarrassed for all of them as actors (the little girl was cute though, and it was not her fault that her parents let her work in a movie like that). There was a lot of profanity for a family theme. I thought it was going to be a good movie, but I was terribly wrong.
Trash Marketed as a Fun Comedy:
I don't know if I'm more grieved or outraged by this film; grieved that this is the kind of film choice that's out there when you want a fun, sit-back-and-enjoy movie to relax with, but especially grieved that this film has received so many accolades, a true reflection of how low we have sunk as a society. Where has our human dignity gone? I'm outraged that this film is marketed as a fun, bright (just look at the DVD jacket), family film-despite its R rating-but is packed with such dark topics, as suicide,... more info
dvd review:
I love this movie. I have recommended Little Miss Sunshine to every person I know. You will see your own family in this dramatic comedy. Steve Carell and Abigail Breslin---AWESOME--as well as the rest of the cast.
Modern Hollywood can't make a 5 star comedy - UNTIL NOW:
I thought it couldn't be done. This is not the era of Lloyd, or Fields or Laurel and Hardy. It's not the era of Capra or Preston. 99% of modern comedies suck badly, and or are mean spirited. But miracle of miracles, someone current, finally made an hilarious movie with a heart as big as "You Can't Take it With You!" Credit here goes not to the very good cast but stunningly to the writer/directors: Michael Arndt - Screenwriter, co directed by Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris. Brilliant, and... more info
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