Little Miss Sunshine is a nice little movie about a generally nice little family. Here’s the thing - right after I watched it I liked it a lot more than I do a couple of days later. It’s a pretty good movie for what it is. I came away thinking that Olive was precious and I liked how her family supported and loved her so completely. However, there are things that I didn’t like about this movie that upon longer reflection tarnish that initial fondness for the rest of it all. In particular, most of the stuff surrounding the grandfather (played very well by Alan Arkin, whom I think is a brilliant actor) was very off putting. And my frequent complaint about movies is the profligate use of the F-word. LMS features that particular word a lot.

What I loved was the van and everything to do with the van. And the scary beauty pageant, which I’m afraid is all too real to life. Yikes…

To take a page from Jaynee and her movie rating system, 2.5 car horns out of 5.

The Guardian was on my queue and may never have made it to the top of the list much less gotten shipped to my house except that our pastor is doing a sermon series using movies and The Guardian is next weeks sermon. To avoid the spoilers to come, we watched it last night. It was exactly what I expected in terms of plot, predictability, mediocre acting, and enjoyability. I’m sure recruiting for the Coast Guard increased slightly after the movie was in theaters, but it wasn’t of the caliber of the ultimate military recruitment movie, Top Gun. Although it did have the cheesy romance side plot that Top Gun did, which I found annoying.

Kevin Costner is one of the most, if not the most, wooden actors in Hollowood today. The surprise to me was the quality of Ashton Kutcher’s acting - he’s not too bad. The training scenes were interesting as were the rescues. I liked learning a little bit more about what it is the USCG rescue swimmers do. Oh, and there was a lot less profanity in this military-centric movie than in the family-centric movie. For that, I’ll give the movie a positive enough rating.

2.5 life rafts out of 5.

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1. I just posted a blistering comment on Little Miss Sunshine at Dan Drezner’s. The only redeeming features to me were a) the girl is likeable, and b) the deeper message of what is and isn’t a loser.

   http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/003180.html

   What I wrote:

   “I despised Little Miss Sunshine.

   “(Spoiler alert.)

   “Everyone in the family except the suicidal prof and the girl were fifteen shades of unlikeable. Of course that was the whole point of the movie, so it seems. The definition of “loser” was its central theme, and the family illustrated loserdom’s many forms - joyless mom, uber-embittered son, fanatical dad who makes self-help programs look like a Moonie cult, hopeless uncle, crude self-destructive curmudgeon of a grandfather. The irony is that the one non-loser is the girl who loses the beauty pageant, the only normal member of the family. She’s just a little girl trying to have fun.

   “The moral here is that even bad movies sometimes make good philosophical points.”

   (BTW, did anyone else think about JonBenet Ramsey when those beauty pageant contestants were onscreen?)

   Posted by Alan K. Henderson  on  02/26/07  at  02:38 AM

2. I think you just summed up my feelings about Little Miss Sunshine.

   Posted by  on  02/26/07  at  11:35 AM

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