Little Miss Sunshine

A movie review from A View From Mars (and, incidentally, our 500th post on The Movie Court!)

Little Miss Sunshine (B) – Does it ever get better than the dysfunctional family on a road trip comedy? This movie made a splash at Sundance as one of the critics’ darling picks. It boasts a solid cast, a good script and in a few scenes, a temperamental Volkswagen not seen of since Herbie the Love Bug. The plot revolves around the youngest daughter defaulting her way as her local town’s representative for the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant which so happens to be held cross country in California. I’m not quite sure which way the distribution marketing heads were going with this film as most anything I saw on this led me to believe that I was going to experience a light drama with some comedy thrown in. However, this was definitely more on the comedic side, if not completely. In particular, there were a few running gags that I thought were going to get old quick, but instead, I continued to laugh each and every time. So to summarize; Steve Carrell as a gay uncle, Greg Kinnear as a failed Anthony Robbins-lite self help guru and Alan Arkin as the callous and foul mouthed grandpa. A solid picture that poses the movie going question of, “why not, what else do I have to do.”