Posted on 09/03/2006 8:38:11 AM PDT by pabianice
Hollywood is all abuzz about “Little Miss Sunshine,” a deftly presented piece of porn pretending to be a “heart-warming Oscar contender.” The bubbly adjectives simply swirl about this recent release: “brilliant, deftly drawn, heartwarming, raucous, superb, human, engrossing, fun, ingenious, brilliantly hysterical, warm, moving, endearing,” and more. The truth is far less sunny. “Little Miss Sunshine” is a $10 million kiddie porn movie that displays just how rotten Hollywood has become and just how far its powerbrokers have moved from America. That it was the hit of the Sundance Festival was pre-ordained.
It’s hard to know where to begin in talking about this movie and what it tells us about the current business of making movies. The cast is, to be fair, very good, the direction competent, the scene dressing excellent. But the movie itself is tasteless and basically disgraceful, an updated version of “All in the Family,” in which evil, stupid Red America is brought up short by savvy, hip Blue America. Alan Arkin plays grandpa, an aging bum who snorts heroin (yuk, yuk) and was expelled from his nursing home because he is a dangerous, in-your-face loser who counsels others to live irresponsibly. One of his character’s two sons has just tried to kill himself because he was jilted by his gay lover (audience eyes tear up because it’s so, you know, sensitive and, you know, PC). The other son is a financially failed, unsuccessful huckster of a step program for self-improvement who is taken advantage of by Evil Big Business. The teenage grandson is apparently a lunatic who is determined to get into the Air Force Academy and who has taken a vow of silence until he is accepted (that there is a huge poster of an F-18 – a Navy airplane – on his bedroom wall clearly escaped the schmucks who produced this film). We never learn how he plans to do well in high school while refusing to speak. In one violent sequence we learn what potential US military officers are really like when this clueless, friendless loner goes berserk. Nice touch, Hollywood.
And then there is the grand daughter, Olive, a perky seven-year-old who becomes the winner of a local talent contest when the winner is disqualified for what sounds like doping (although we aren’t sure). Olive has a routine of which we remain uninformed until the final sequence. During the 800-mile cross-country drive in a rolling deathtrap of a VW minibus (so, so, 60s! you know), grandpa dies of a heroin overdose while baby-sitting Olive (Manson family values are on display everywhere in this film), so the family steals his body from the hospital, wraps him in a sheet, and stuffs him in the back of the bus. This sequence simply sparkles with the kind of wit for which Hollywood has become so justifiably famous and was getting old when it was done in “National Lampoon’s Vacation” thirty years ago. Of course, the bus is stopped by a cop on the road, but no problem. The cop is, as are all cops, you know, a leering, loathsome policeman who, upon finding a stash of porn magazines, trades some comments with dad that are so uncomfortable for the audience as to make grandpa’s death look like an episode of “Teletubbies.”
Sounds charming.
WHat makes it REALLY reprehensible is that ther eis a Bill Maher love scene in it.
Thanks for the warning. It's now on my must miss list.
Two people told me to see this saying it wasn't what I thought it would be. This article uncannily touches on every single thing I was afraid of. PC Hollywood is so predictable.
"Little Miss Sunshine" is a very funny movie and this review is the thing that is horrible here... Something must have crawled up Navlog's badside before he saw it...
Go see the movie... it's funny and farcical...
Uh, I saw this movie. Your "review" bears little resemblance to the picture I sat through.
Granted, I did not like the language or the crude sexual remarks made by the grandfather, but alot of the movie was not far removed from real life. And at times very funny.
Well, I saw this movie and thought it was very funny! So funny, that I'm taking the family to see it again. It is very twisted, the characters don't have any redeeming qualities, yet they all pull together in the end.
I can't say too much without giving it away, but it does shine a kleig light on the ridiculousness of beauty pagents for children.
If you don't like it don't watch it. I just watched "Pride and Prejudice" made in England in 2005. Sensational! And "Pushing Tin". Wonderful cast and an adult theme. Could have been great but it descended into melodrama and silly philosphy and the redemptive powers of backwash.
There have always been terrible movies, terrible stories, terrible people. But you have the power of free will. Use it.
But Time magazine says, "American dysfunction! Is there anything more comically inspiring than a hard, hilarious look at the reality behind this ruling cliché? For all the exaggerations in Michael Arndt's script...it comes closer to the truth about the way people really live--on the edge of fantasy-driven desperation--than our sanctimonies permit us to think."
How can it be bad?
Much more frightening than the making and touting of this 'film' is the truth that so many American young will pay to see it and think it's funny and spot on! God how I hate liberalism and the degeneracy it has accomplished already to my nation. I've seen first hand, with two stepkids, what dgeenrate thinking it can accomplish. Thankfully, I no longer have to endure the blind stupidity of that too close liberalism and leftist ideology. But my nation is dying from the infection.
Hollywood (and its emulators) are now operating under the proposition that all idiots are created equal and the entertainment of the idiots, by the idiots and for the idiots shall not perish from this earth.
Okay.
For someone who points out that the movie gets an airplane detail wrong, this writer needs to learn a little about the Academy and Hollywood he criticizes. There is no "Best Production" Oscar, hasn't been in ages.
Sounds like an update of "American Beauty".
After the last 2 movies rented I have decided life would be better without the crap hollywood is producing.
1 or 2 movies a year are good imo and I will wait for them.
It is a film, a funny film. that is all. It is meant to entertain not to spark a cultural revolution or turn unwitting people into malcontents or killers. I wish the people here at FR would stop being so frigging judgemental about something they have not seen or plan to see. In fact, they should hold any comment. Those that do comment with out seeing it are perpetuating their own angst.
It is a Movie that's all... albeit a funny one...
And isn't that what you want in entertainment, to see people with no redeeming qualities pull together? Not moi. I see that too darn much of that in real life. I ain't gonna pay nine bucks to watch it.
Rent 'Secondhand Lions' ... or buy it and watch it occasionally. 'Dragonfly' is also a great work out of Hollyweird.
No. it doesn't. Go to moviephone and see the trailer on line.. That is the least that people can do who haven't seen the movie...
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