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.”
I'd never heard of it before this post. But apparently Medved thought it was OK, which does make the reviewer in the article somewhat suspect IMO.
It amazes me the people who simply take anything at face value. No one gets satire anymore it seems.
Not a Hollywood movie by the way. It was an independent film that has been picked up by Fox Searchlight for distribution. Completely different animal.
I saw the show...I'm a south park republican...but i thought the show was so tacky and could have been much better...i wished the damn van had blown up and killed everyone in it by the end of the show...granted, it was some good acting, won't deny that....but i didn't connect with a single character.
I saw the movie a few weeks ago and it sucked.It was mean spirited, crass, and disgusting. Rent Down and Out in Beverly Hills instead.
I always figured Alan Arkin was what you would get if you crossed Dustin Hoffman with Donald Sutherland.
Jon Benet Ramsey has done a pretty good job of that.
Sorry you didn't like it...
Didn't they already do "American Beauty"? This sounds like the sequel.
Generalizations about people are always unwise. :)
"I wish the people here at FR would stop being so frigging judgemental about something they have not seen or plan to see."
That'll never happen. You can yell at them and call them names, but they won't change. Too many like being told what to think instead of thinking for themselves.
The storyline is contrary to the values I defend, the content is designed to be cute in its portrayal of degeneracy, and paying to see such filth only supports same. So, what part of degeneracy do you stilll not get?
Why would I even want to go support this garbage, to placate the twisted minds of folks like you who defend and praise this garbage? I hardly care to what depth your mind has been deceived, but I do have a way to avoid throwing into the same sewer ... so I will not go see such crap to be hip or with it. I'll leave such sycophancy to your ilk. Look at yourself, how you are trying so hard to defend this degeneracy. Why? To make yourself feel okay that you can laugh at such filth? Does dragging others into the sewer cleanse your state of existence?
Wow, I saw this movie and enjoyed it.
I hardly thought it pornographic, nor did anything I saw in it strike me as a swipe at red-state America.
If you're considering seeing this movie, don't let this review influence your decision.
Maybe you'll like it, maybe you won't. It's offbeat. The humor is sometimes dry, sometimes dark, sometimes a little slap-stick.
I simply don't think it's full of the demons this reviewer seems to have seen in it.
I saw it. A great movie. Two thumbs up!
Some "red state vs. blue state" adherants are becoming a bit too much like the paranoid (or at least cynical) race baiters.
They imagine offences against them where they are not intended, or where they do not exist.
If the family in question is the obvious group of losers it is portrayed to be, it seemingly does the opposite of what this "critic" is crying about.
It makes fun of the VW (so it isn't cool), heroine kills grandpa (so it certainly isn't being glamorized or presented as chic), etc.
Sheesh.
I'm glad you guys came on here to set us straight, thanks.
It can be.
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