Sunday was actually an "independent film" double feature for me and my friends, as we followed The Illusionist with Little Miss Sunshine.Little Miss Sunshine is a pretty simple little movie, but a really, really good one. The six actors in the family at the center of the movie are all perfect. Plus, some familiar faces from various TV shows pop up in small roles throughout.
The movie is laugh out loud funny. Well, at least it certainly is for the first half. And I'm not sure that it stopped being funny in the second half, but the way I was reacting to the movie certainly changed.
The thing is, there's a hell of a lot of personal tragedy happening to this family in the course of this movie. It's played for comedy, but there came a point where I reacted far more to the sadness of it all. And after that, I came unraveled emotionally for a bit. By the third major blow to this family, I actually was more on the verge of tears than laughter. (I'll talk about all this more in the comments, in spoiler-ific detail for those who have seen the movie. I hope not to reveal too much here for those who haven't.)
It's basically my main requirement to liking a movie that it make me feel something. The stronger the feelings, the more I like the movie. It can be a tragedy evoking great sadness, or a comedy keeping me in stitches, a thriller or an adventure keeping me tense and excited, or a clever tale intriguing me with its twist and turns. So, by this criteria, this movie really took me on a ride.
And the ending is perfect. I hope this isn't giving away too much, but I'll simply say that there isn't really any ultimate resolution for the heap of troubles visited on this family. Instead, they simply have one massive, cathartic moment together where they just let it all go. Nothing is solved, but presumably they've found whatever "reserves" they need to jump back into life and keep going.
I give this movie an A. However, I'm not quite sure it cracks the top 100 list -- which is a further clue that I need to go back at some point here and really tweak the top 100 list, particularly the bottom quarter. There are some A- movies hanging out around there that probably shouldn't be.
But that's a matter for another time. For now, I'm recommending Little Miss Sunshine.
1 comment:
Alright, so you've seen the movie. If not, last chance to avoid being spoiled.
There's a trio of personal tragedies that happen to the family around halfway through the story. First, the father's motivational program fails to sell when the family was counting on that money to stay afloat. I had a pretty detached reaction to this. Sort of "oh, that's pretty awful," but I kept on laughing at the movie.
Then the grandfather dies. I'm not quite the sort of person you need to be walking on eggshells around right now, but I did find it was still a little too soon for me to be laughing at dead grandfathers. At least, not constantly. I was still cracking a pretty big smile at them smuggling the body out of the hospital and into their VW bus -- though maybe feeling more than a little wrong to be laughing at that, too.
But then the son finds out he's colorblind and can't ever achieve his dream of being a pilot. Now, no doubt my “pump was already primed” from the business with the grandfather, but for some reason, I just couldn't take this. This kid's dream -- a dream for which he'd given up speaking for most of a year -- was completely crushed. And the performance by the actor, Paul Dano, was just perfect. You could feel it cut completely to the core of the character, and it got to me too. I basically almost totally lost it. So I'm a softie. So there. For me, it set up for the ending to be the big release it was meant to be, with the whole family jumping up on stage to dance to Superfreak with Olive.
Everybody who sees their share of movies has a few that they might admit aren't quite that *objectively* "good," but that came at a time in their life where they made a great impact. Often, it's a movie seen in childhood, but I think maybe the same thing happened here. Maybe I'll look back at this movie later and decide it's not really quite as good as I thought today. But for now, it's a definite A. Literally, "you'll laugh, you'll cry." That's about as good as a movie can get.
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