RDJ`s Blogs

October 29, 2007

Little Miss Sunshine is the story of a few
eventful days in the lives of the

Hoovers

,
a family living in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Sheryl Hoover (Toni Collette) is an overworked mother of two.
Her brother Frank (Steve Carell) is a Proust
scholar, temporarily living at home with the family after having attempted suicide
in the wake of a failed relationship. Sheryl’s husband Richard (G
eg Kinnear)
is a Type A personality striving to help support the
family as a motivational speaker and life coach.
Dwayne (Paul Dano),
Sheryl’s son from a previous marriage, is a Nietzsche-reading teenager who has taken a vow of
silence until he can accomplish his dreams of becoming a test pilot.
Richard’s father, Edwin (Alan Arkin), recently evicted from a retirement
home for snorting heroin, lives with the family; he is close to his
seven-year-old granddaughter Olive (Abigail
Breslin).

Olive learns she has qualified for the
"Little Miss Sunshine" beauty
pageant that is being held in Redondo Beach, California in two days. The
family, wanting to support her, quickly realizes that they all must accompany
Olive to the pageant, getting there via an 800-mile road trip
in their yellow
Volkswagen T2 Microbus.

Family tensions play out on the highway and at
stops along the way, amidst the aging VW van’s mechanical problems. When the
van breaks down early on, they learn that they must push the van until it is
moving at about 20 mph before it is put into gear, at which point they have to
run up to the side door and jump in. Later, the van’s horn malfunctions and
begins honking continuously. The family suffers setbacks: Richard loses a big
deal that would have jump-started his motivational technique business; Frank,
in a convenience store buying pornography at Edwin’s request, encounters the
ex-boyfriend whose actions had prompted his suicide attempt; Edwin dies from a heroin
overdose during the family’s stay at a motel; Dwayne discovers that
he is color-blind, which means he cannot become a
pilot (a realization that prompts him to break his silence); and Sheryl’s
obsessive manner impels her to attempt to keep everyone, including herself,
calm and sane.

The climax takes place at the pageant, which features young
hypersexualized girls with teased hair and capped teeth, wearing adult-like
swimsuits and evening wear and performing elaborate dance numbers. Olive,
untrained in beauty pageant conventions, is evidently out of place. Recognizing
that Olive is a fish out of water whose feelings could really
get hurt, the family considers withdrawing her from the competition; Sheryl
nevertheless insists that they have to "let Olive be Olive" and participate.

In the talent portion of the pageant, the
hitherto-unrevealed dance that Grandpa Edwin had choreographed
for his granddaughter is revealed: To the tune of Rick James‘
"Super Freak,"
Olive scandalizes and horrifies almost all of the audience and pageant judges
with a burlesque
performance that she joyfully performs, as oblivious to the subtext
behind the dance as the other contestants were to the provocative costumes and
heavy makeup they were wearing.

When the pageant director approaches Sheryl and
Richard to insist on the immediate removal of Olive from the stage , they,
along with Frank and Dwayne, instead join Olive on the stage and dance alongside
her.

The family is next seen outside a police
officer’s office. They are free to go on condition that Olive never take part
in a beauty pageant in

California

ever again. They pile into the van and, with the horn still honking, smash
through the barrier of a toll booth that the pageant official had stopped at,
laughing together as they go. The movie cuts to black with the horn, still
broken, sounding as the family heads back to

Albuquerque

.

The movie is 2+2 thumbs up,…You
must watch this movie.. =D

Now, it`s already 3:05 AM, but I`m
taking a little of my time just to do this post.. …hohoho

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