Blog From The Bench

The closest we've gotten this summer to an indie crossover is a film full of flaws, chief among them being its annoying habit to just not go over-the-top with a situation, but run with it until it reaches levels of jaw-dropping inanity (at one point my friend looked over at me and commented sarcastically “are we watching a Disney channel movie?”). And a lot of the metaphors are indeed heavy-handed—the VW bus in the same decrepit shape as the family, held together only by combined willpower, for instance (though I’m not entirely convinced that their obviousness makes them any less affecting). The thing is, it felt like the film presented all of these shortcomings within its first ten minutes, and to have expected anything less than for them to pop up periodically throughout the film would have been more than just a little bit foolish.

That all said, more in this film to cherish than to loathe, which is a great credit to the pitch-perfect ensemble work of the cast for rising above the limitations of their script. Once again, I find myself in the position of Stephanie Zacharek making the exact point I wanted to make, and doing it much, much better than I’m likely able to. But I can’t agree more with her closing line that “greatness, sometimes, is the stuff that happens in the corners,” because that’s what I think is at the heart of Little Miss Sunshine’s ultimate success. Throughout the film I kept finding brief but constant moments to savor—a gesture, a facial expression, an quip coming from an angle I hadn’t anticipated. Mild Spoilers They appear from all over the place, from Paul Dano’s smile as he eavesdrops on his parents argument (I thought “oh, here’s the moment where his reservations against his family starts to melt”—his smile took me completely by surprise), to the written comment early in the film “please don’t kill yourself tonight,” to the glare Toni Collette gives Greg Kinnear through the windshield that says everything (and then some), to Steve Carrell’s unlikely sprint in the hotel that Zacharek sites in her review. If there’s a standout among the actors, it’s Steve Carrell (who I realize now I’ve grossly underrated)—that quick duck he attempts to make in the convenient store as his rival and former flame snicker at him from their convertible conveys the complete devastation of a person’s identity with more eloquence and resonance than I expected from a film of this nature. End of Spoilers

Thinking about it now, Little Miss Sunshine strikes me as being very similar to what happens with a lot of Robert Altman’s films: when the story takes a dive (and it does happen often, unfortunately) the actors always seem in place, ready to save the film from itself. Not that I think this film compares with most of Altman’s output, but the circumstances involved are similar enough to make the comparison.

Basically, I’m reasonably certain at this point that it’s going to be the films flaws that melt from my mind as time goes on, and it’s only going to be those flashes of unexpected humor and humanity that will remain firmly lodged in my memory. Yes, I liked it a lot.