Little Miss Sunshine

Update: I finally got around to watching this film in its entirety. My review is here.

Another Update: James Wolcott of Vanity Fair has a blog entry on “Little Miss Sunshine” here.

****

As a member of NYFCO (New York Film Critics Online), I get to see films for free at AMC/Loew’s theaters. Unlike my colleagues, I tend not to use the privilege that often. Generally speaking, they have professional obligations to cover the latest dreadful weekly openings. I tend to review documentaries, foreign films and rented vintage films. NYFCO has an awards meeting at the end of the year that picks the best out of Hollywood in the spirit of the Oscars. Last year my nominations were viewed with a mixture of annoyance and bemusement. This year I feel honor-bound to try to take in some of the more critically acclaimed independent films made in the USA that are generally favored by my colleagues. As my first foray into this unfamiliar territory, I went to see “Little Miss Sunshine” with an open mind. It only took me 10 minutes to walk out of this off-putting mess of a film.

The first 10 minutes of the film introduce you to the most unpalatable group of characters imaginable, all members of the dysfunctional Hoover family in Albuquerque that goes on a cross-country trip to enter their young daughter at a beauty contest of the sort that JonBenet Ramsey was exploited at until she was murdered. I got off at the first exit myself.

Greg Kinnear plays Richard Hoover, the little girl’s father. He is first seen presenting one of those dopey motivational talks about how to succeed in business in nine easy steps to a tiny group of paying customers. This of course establishes him as a complete loser. How can you make a living giving such talks when you can’t fill the seats yourself?

His teenage son Dwayne is played by Paul Dano. His bedroom is constructed as a shrine to Friedrich Nietzsche, whose writings have inspired him to take an oath of silence. Why is not exactly clear. When I was a miserable adolescent myself, reading Nietzsche made me want to speechify. Despite his deep alienation, Dwayne has his heart set on being accepted at the Air Force Academy as a first step toward realizing his dream of being a fighter pilot. In other words, the character has no reality. Teenage boys with such hopes do not read Nietzsche. They play video games, watch football and beat up boys like Dwayne.

Richard Hoover’s father Edwin (played by Alan Arkin) lives with the family. We first meet him in the family bathroom snorting heroin–he has been thrown out of a senior residence for unspecified misbehavior.

Olive Hoover, the youthful beauty contest aspirant, is played by Abigail Breslin. She is obsessed with Miss America contests and spends every free moment watching past contests on her VCR.

Richard’s wife Sheryl (Toni Collette) returns home with Richard’s brother Frank, a college professor and Proust scholar who has just been released from the hospital after slashing his wrists. He is played by Steve Carrell, the star of the horrid “40 Year Old Virgin,” another film that has him typecast as a pathetic loser.

As the entire clan sits down for a dinner of take-out fried chicken, Frank explains the bandages on his wrist to Olive, who was initially told that he was in some kind of accident. He confesses that he attempted suicide after being rejected by a male student that he had fallen in love with. Olive is aghast at the news that men can love other men. It seems doubtful, of course, that a 10 year old in contemporary America would be unaware that homosexuals exist. While munching on a corncob, the grandfather says that there are words to describe such behavior but he would refrain from using them.

Shortly after dinner, Richard expresses his anxiety about getting a phone call from Stan Grossman who has been working with him to get his book published. When I heard that name, I said to myself that rings a bell. After beginning to reflect more on the character that Greg Kinnear was playing, a pathetic loser with delusions of grandeur, I suddenly realized that Stan Grossman was a character in “Fargo,” the financial adviser to the millionaire father of the kidnapped woman. The Kinnear character was practically lifted from the husband (played by William Macy) of that woman.

Okay, I get it. The film had now classified itself, if there was any doubt, as belonging to the freak show tradition mastered by the Coen brothers and emulated by bright young things coming out of film school everywhere–but without the talent of the Coen brothers (sadly mostly now eroded.) The idea of spending another 90 minutes with the Hoovers was about as appetizing as getting root-canal work, so I walked out.

The 10 minutes of this film left me feeling with such a sour taste that I decided to write about it when I got home. Who was responsible for this freak show crafted for an audience whose sense of humor has largely been molded by television situation comedies and SNL?

It is co-directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, who have never made a feature film before. They have done nothing except music videos before, featuring attractions like Paula Abdul and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Indeed. It was written by one Michael Arndt, who had never written a screenplay before. It shows.

I suppose I should have been more careful given this endorsement from Marc Cooper:

Faster, shorter movie review: “Little Miss Sunshine is fabulous.” It’s been a long, long, long time since I have so thoroughly enjoyed a movie. Go see it this weekend and report back.

I guess that Cooper is more in line with mainstream opinion on this film than me, since 93 percent of the critics on rottentomatoes.com, where my reviews appear, raved about it. (Of course, 93 percent of Americans probably hate Hugo Chavez along with Cooper as well, for what that’s worth.) Indeed, the audience was guffawing at the stupid jokes as I made my way up the aisle out of the theater. I guess I needed reminding why shows like “Will and Grace” remain on the air, if not beloved by millions.

Recently economists have been mulling over the question whether American workers have progressed at all since 1973. While the numbers indicate that more hours are needed to secure a house and other basic goods, some economists argue that the introduction of new technologies like cell phones, microwave ovens and video games, etc. more than make up for this.

I don’t know. I often feel nostalgic for the 1950s when you could go into a fruit store like my father’s and eat a tomato whose flavor expresses a kind of Platonic ideal, not to speak of the fact that you didn’t have to worry about e. coli.

I also feel nostalgic for the movies I used to watch when I was an undergraduate. The other night I caught most of “The Seventh Seal” on TCM and sat enthralled once again by Ingmar Bergman’s genius.

I’ll tell you what. I’ll give back my cell phone if I could see films like that any day of the week.

UPDATE:

Excellent review of “Little Miss Sunshine”