Review of Little Miss Sunshine (2006) by Tania — 15 Apr 2008

Mystifyingly bad. Oh, how I wanted to like it. Cliched characters assembled on a screenwriters factory line, with nary a breath of life in them (save Breslin, lovable without ever being cloying), a plot creakingly contrived from start to finish.

Not one moment of this film rang true (ok, one - the sweet scene where Alan Arkin's 'foulmouthed grandpa' - I imagine this is what he was dubbed in the screenplay - assures Breslin's wannabe beauty queen that she is beautiful.

Really - and this is the film at its most touching.), nevermind tickled the funny bone. Replete with gaping holes in character motivation/ development you could drive a truck through (the son wants to be a fighter pilot, so he took a vow of silence.

This leads us conveniently to 'funny,' furious scribbling in a notepad, ' I hate everyone'. Teenage angst has never been so subtle!). Even the supposedly laugh-out loud finale felt heavy-handed and like a desperate, mean, and inexplicable ploy for laughs.

Finally, it just felt so slight - at film's end, a great big shrug is all I could muster.