'Little Miss Sunshine' review

A quirky look at one of America's most perverse past-times: pre-teen beauty pageants

By Ceda Xiong
Published: July 17th, 2006 | 10:33pm

The intersection of two of Middle America's weirdest rituals - pre-teen beauty pageants and motivational speaking - is at the biting center of Little Miss Sunshine. Thus it makes a strange kind of sense that Olive, Little Miss Sunshine contestant, has a motivational speaker for a father. Could anything else be more American than pageant winners and lofty, unsupportable expectations?

The directors appreciate the quirky movie formula: a horn-dog grandfather, a teenager obsessed with Nietzsche, and a family trapped in a van for six hours... baste for two hours and the script is done. Like most road trip movies (Thelma and Louise, Y Tu Mama Tambien, The Motorcycle Diaries), Little Miss Sunshine is full of lessons to be learned and feelings to be expressed. It narrowly avoids feeling recycled with its immensely charming cast. Greg Kinnear plays the motivational-speaking father, and his naked failures make his asinine "motivational pearls" all the more painful and hilarious.

The titular star, Little Miss Sunshine, played by Abigail Breezily, has the authenticity and liveliness of a 'real' child, with her tummy roundly defiant next to the other eight-year-olds, with their mini abs of steel and glitter bikinis. We're constantly relieved by Olive's understanding of the world - when she is uncomfortable, we're squeamish. When her father insinuates that eating ice-cream might not win pageants, she makes sure that her hero, Ms. California, eats ice-cream. Her relief is palpable and adorable.

The two directors, with extensive background in concert documentaries, make the ensemble comedy well-paced. Every character is given their allotted moment of effective anguish, balanced by its gentle humor. Even though it's a family of misfits and losers, only the defeat of their own expectations brings sweet sunshine happiness.