She Makes You Laugh, She Makes You Cry: A Review of "Little Miss Sunshine"

At first glance, “Little Miss Sunshine,” the 2006 dark comedy directed by Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton, is just another rated R film that aims at shocking its audience with foul language and dark humor, but when you look closer, one can see the bittersweet story that aims to teach its audience that to be a real winner in life, you need to focus on what makes you happy and the people who support you, not what society dictates. The story centers on the Hoover family, a family of people that could each be considered a loser in their own right: Richard (Greg Kinnear), the father obsessed with his nine step program that focuses on creating winners, Sheryl (Toni Collette), the mother just trying to keep her family afloat, Edwin (Alan Arkin), the drug and sex addicted but well-meaning grandpa, Frank (Steve Carell), the gay depressed uncle who was just released from the hospital after a failed suicide attempt, Dwayne (Paul Dano), the angsty teenaged brother who has taken a vow of silence and Olive (Abigail Breslin), the sweet daughter determined to become a pageant queen despite her lack of talent and beauty. This band of misfits venture on a road trip full of chaos from New Mexico to California in order for Olive to compete in the Little Miss Sunshine pageant. From the very beginning, the script, written by Michael Arndt, focuses heavily on what society considers a winner to be. In fact, the very theme of the movie is touched upon in Richard’s first line in the movie, “There are two kinds of people in this world, winners and losers.” After this line is said, the film shows a few scenes of each of the family members living their life: Richard giving a seminar to a sparse audience, Olive watching pageant videos in childlike awe, Edwin taking drugs, Dwayne, a skinny boy lifting weights in his room, Sheryl, smoking while driving to the hospital, and Frank, sitting in a wheelchair awaiting to be picked up by Sheryl. With these scenes and Richard’s speech, it’s clear from the get-go that the directors want the audience to believe that this family is full of people who will just never be winners. On the road trip, this message becomes even more apparent through the symbolism of their mode of transportation: a bright yellow Volkswagen van. Yellow is associated with happiness and the contrast between this symbolism and the family’s ever growing despair and suffering somehow makes the suffering seem worse. The family is not working together. They’re fighting. They’re annoying each other. Heck, at one point or another, a character gets left behind and they need to retrieve them. The writer then tells the audience through the van’s stick shift breaking that the Hoover family won’t get any farther into the trip or life until they start supporting each other. It is then when we start to see a shift in the familial dynamic. They have to push the van together to get it rolling, run to jump into it, and then they have to pull each other into the van. It’s quite an ordeal, but the first time they do this is the first time we see them really interact as a group that genuinely cares about each other. Despite the fact that the trip just keeps getting worse and worse, their bond keeps growing. Every time they run and pull each other into the van, the process seems easier. You can almost see the strengthening of their bond through the strengthening of the process. Through the family becoming more family-like, the audience loses sight of the fact that we’re supposed to see them as losers. We start to root for them. They're underdogs, sure, but more likeable underdogs than before. When the family finally reaches the Little Miss Sunshine pageant, you can’t help but hold your breath. This is seemingly the pinnacle of Olive’s life that we’ve been waiting the whole movie to see. Something this film is really great at doing is utilizing contrast in imagery and Olive at the pageant is no different. The girls surrounding Olive are being spray tanned, doused in hairspray, and seemingly have abs while poor Olive is just a normal girl with coke bottle glasses and a little more meat on her bones. Even her pageant costume color scheme is different from the other girls. While Olive is in black and reds, the other Little Miss Sunshine contestants are in pinks, greens, and whites. She doesn’t belong. It’s through this imagery that the audience gains a sense of foreboding. This pageant isn’t going to go well for Olive. We’ve started to feel like a part of her family and we don’t want to see her fail. At the same time, her family begins to worry as well. There’s talk about pulling her out of the pageant, but it’s too late. She performs an unusual and slightly raunchy dance number for the talent portion. During this scene, I couldn’t help but hold my breath. The entire movie Richard emphasized that you didn’t do something like enter a contest if you didn’t think you were going to win, and Olive reveals in an earlier scene that she is afraid that she’ll lose her father’s love if she doesn’t win. What was Richard going to do now that Olive was for sure going to lose the pageant? If you guessed he’ll support and love her, you were right. When a pageant judge disgustedly asks Richard what his daughter was doing, he proudly responds that “She’s kickin’ ass! That’s what she’s doing!” He and the rest of the family then join her in dancing and laughing in the face of the judging and disgruntled crowd. This is the happiest that we’ve ever seen the family despite the fact that they have become losers in every traditional sense of the word. They are literally laughing in the face of society. Sure, Olive will lose the pageant but she won something far greater. She won the ability to just have fun and not care about being a winner. Finally, when the family heads home, they easily pull each other up, both into the van and in spirits, and are calm because they know that no matter what happens, they’ll have each other. Ultimately, this movie is all about family and how their support through good and bad times can make you feel like a winner even when you’re not. So, if you want to watch a movie that can make you laugh as easily as it can make you cry while also leaving you with the urge to call up your family and hug them all to death, then I highly encourage you to watch “Little Miss Sunshine” as soon as you can. You won’t regret it.