Little Miss Sunshine

Last night, we watched what I suspect is one of the funniest movies of last year--Little Miss Sunshine, a satire that spoofs family vacations and beauty pageants. Although the themes could be distilled to trite sayings--"be true to thyself" or "love yourself" or "blood is thicker than water" etc.--the movie is ultimately a powerful affirmation of familial solidarity, love, and the importance of individuality. The dysfunctional family in the film is made up of a heroin-snorting grandpa kicked out of his retirement home for bad behavior, a nerdy 9-year-old who will compete against Jon Bonet-Ramsay look-alikes to try to win the Little Miss Sunshine pageant, a teen who reads Nietzche and hasn't spoken in 9 months, a husband who has started a wildly unsuccessful business of inspirational speaking about success, a wife at the end of her patience, and an uncle who happens to be the #1 Proust scholar in the U.S. but is fresh out of the hospital after a suicide attempt when his male lover left him for the #2 Proust scholar in the U.S. They are on their way to California for the Little Miss Sunshine pageant and a host of hilarious events accompany them. Unlike movies like Vacation where most of the action and comedy is based on external events that happen to the characters, Little Miss Sunshine is centered entirely around things that happen because of the characters' interactions with each other. But the family, as an entity but also as individuals, changes in both subtle and dramatic ways, as each discovers the truth about themselves and each other.

I felt a bit like I was watching a spoof of my own family, especially when the VW van they were driving broke down just enough that the entire family would have to get out and push it when they needed to start on an uphill slope, then run and jump in while the van was moving. Who, among VW van owners, hasn't had to do that at some point?