Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. By now you've heard your fill on this film. It's all over the place... Entertainment Weekly cover, slowly opening all across the country, tons of "critic ads" telling us how much critics love it...
And I'll tell ya' nothing different here. This movie is great.
I knew little going into it, other than it made a huge deal at Sundance. I saw the trailer and knew people seemed to like it.
I'd almost suggest if you know nothing besides who is in it, just blind buy your ticket. It's that good. Don't read any more of what I have to say, don't read any other reviews... just look in your paper, check Fandango, whatever you do when looking up flicks, see if it's playing and go see it.
For those still wanting to read more about the flick, the plot really isn't the most interesting thing about this film. This is a total character comedy. The main plot only serves to keep our main characters, a highly dysfunctional family, spinning and yelling at each other/helping each other along. The basic plot has a family, made up of a father (Greg Kinnear) who is struggling with his career as a self-help guru, a mother (Toni Collette) who is... a mom, a teenage son (Paul Dano) who has taken a vow of silence, a suicidal gay Uncle (Steve Carell), a heroin-addicted, cantankerous grandfather (Alan Arkin) and a little girl (Abigail Breslin) who is an unlikely beauty pageant contestant.
If you've seen the trailer, you know that little Olive (Breslin) gets a call telling her that her second place win for the local pageant just turned into a first place due to a diet pill controversy. The family decides to drop everything and drive from Arizona to California and the movie becomes a road trip movie, the funniest road movie since NATIONAL LAMPOON'S VACATION.
But this movie doesn't feel at all like VACATION, although there are some pretty striking similarities at times. The tone of this film strangely feels like a great, but dark PG comedy (like a '70s PG film), but with more F-bombs than an Eddie Murphy stand-up act.
LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE strikes that perfect balance that comedies don't often hit. It's hilarious, but sweet. It's not a cartoon, it's NOT a spoof. There's a realism here... I could believe this family existed, but it also doesn't feel like a dramedy.
Paul Dano and Alan Arkin steal this movie for me. I think much like Beatle fans different people will pick different characters as their favorites. For me, it's all about Paul Dano, the speechless teenage boy, and Alan Arkin's grandfather character. Arkin is politically incorrect, perverted, a druggie, but how can he still come off as being so sweet? He's so great in this film and it's great to see him commanding a comedy again.
Paul Dano, I'd argue, had the toughest job of all the cast. You might have seen him in L.I.E. or THE GIRL NEXT DOOR. He's one of the emerging talents starring in tons of upcoming films like THE KING, FAST FOOD NATION, WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, as well as Paul Thomas Anderson's THERE WILL BE BLOOD. In the film, he has to act without speaking due to his character's self-imposed vow of silence. He'll occasionally write down responses, but more often than not, he conveys his side of a conversation with only body language, a head nod or a look of his eyes. He not only has to create his character this way, but he also has to deliver comedy here. And he does. He has some of the biggest laughs of the movie.
I loved this film and I can't wait to see it again. I strongly recommend checking this one out if it's just coming to your town today, like it is here in Austin, or if it's been out and you've put it off, or if you still have a week or two to wait before it comes to a theater near you. Go see this movie.
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
