Movie Review: Little Miss Sunshine

Little Miss Sunshine: Torgo approves

Add this to the list with About a Boy, Love Actually, and Napoleon Dynamite of movies that culminate with a far-fetched, plot apex scene on a stage. It's become the small movie equivalent of the big game at the end of a sports movie.

I was thinking last night, after watching this movie, about how Shakespeare plays all follow the same basic structure and you pretty much always know what you're in for, in terms of body counts in tragedies and happy couples in comedies, and how things will get where they get. The joy, presumably, is in the characters, the dialogue, the nuances.

Little Miss Sunshine is typical and ordinary to the point of being a letdown. It's a group of misfits, an unhappy family, on a road trip. Once it's established what each character's flaw is, it's clear how they will fail. It's also clear that everyone will be "redeemed" by the pageant, though not by winning, but by coming together as a family.

Fortunately, it's full of a bunch of actors I like. Alan Arkin is great. I thought he was great in Glengarry Glen Ross and So I Married an Axe Murderer (his scenes are terrific in that movie). Steve Carrell is good, too. The little girl is surprisingly strong.

This is basically a comfort movie for people who watch a lot of semi-independent movies. It's nothing original or daring, but it's competent and funny.