If you need urgent support, call 999 or go to your nearest A&E. To contact our Crisis Messenger (open 24/7) text THEMIX to 85258.
Options
Film Club: Little Miss Sunshine **Will contain spoilers**
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Right, what did everyone think. I thought it was fucking awesome. Oh, and I know there aren't any spoilers in this opening bit, but I thought I'd put that on the title, so we can talk about what we want.
Post edited by JustV on
0
Comments
That scene was hilarious!! Felt so sorry for the boy
Brill movie
I quite enjoyed it. I was surprised by how much to be honest, since the trailer didn't really sell the film to me. But regardless of whether I thought it was good, I guess the idea of the film club is to actually discuss the film, so here's a few thoughts:
I wonder how real the characters were, and how much it felt like a deliberate play on the traditional hollywood 'family' adventure. Was the interntion to update that kind of film, critique it, or did the makers feel they simply had something unique.
The main characters certainly conformed to traditional stereotypes - the sullen teenagers, the oevr-worked mum, the desperate father, the cranky grandad and the precocious young child.
However everything was obviously a bit off kilter, the main father figure was doomed to failure by his obsession with a business that was useless, and incredibily damaging to those around him. Unlike a melodrama though, this didn't really seem to pull the other people down - everyone else already seems to realise it's pointless and unpleasant what he's teaching. Especially in the ice cream scene.
The sullen son also seems to be somewhat contradictory, he seems related more to Napolean Dynamite than a typical intense teenage character. He exercises a lot, but looks weedy; seems intelligent, but says nothing; is agressively opposed to the 'fakeness' around him but is only able to express himself through writing on a pad. Even with those two characters I wondered if the director was intended to hamstring each player - to make everyone impotent or obviously aiming for something they could never reach?
After all the girl was never going to win the beauty contest, the Grandad was never going to be allowed to return to his perfect OAP home, the son could never join the Airforce, the brother was never going to regain his lost love...
Is the film therefore about accepting limitations - that would seem to be a strong theme, but it also pushes the concept of trying against the odds and trying regardless of failure - maybe that's closer to how the film made me feel, that failure (despite the father's view) was acceptable.
I'll post more in a bit - I think the brother's character in particular is central to why the film isn't a normal feel-good Hollywood movie. (obvious this is just my reaction, feel free to tell me I'm talking shit
So I see Little Miss Sunshine as a flat-out rejection of that fallacious idea. What if the wannabe popstar can't sing? What if the wannabe world heavyweight champion can't fight? And in this case, what if the little girl doesn't fit into the overtly absurd world of these beauty pageant things. This film says: it doesn't matter. And in showing how silly the competition is, it ridicules the notion of coming top - after all, who watches this film and wishes Olive had been a little more conventional and fit in to the conservative, disturbing freakshow that it was?
All of the characters have to accept their failings - the teenager must get on with his life instead of sulking and pretending it isn't happening; the father must change his ways; the gay uncle must accept that things go wrong a lot but it's still worth the ride. In this sense it's a fairly traditional family drama because ultimately it is the bonds of family that keep them all sane and remind each other that 'failing' isn't so bad, whereas in a more leftfield piece you might expect the opposite to be the case. But I like that. It acts as a critique of certains specious values propagated by the Hollywood masses but doesn't go so cynically far as to reject the family unit.
An all-around gem.
Again, I can only apologise and say I'll post more when sober
Now don't get me wrong, I LOVED the character, worldly, vulnerable but knowledgeable, the first to eat the ice cream, got along with everyone - but did he feel real? At times he felt too good to be true compared to the others - and the scene with the vacuous love interest - well it felt tagged on. On one hand he felt like a world-knowing guru imparting knowledge and unfased by the chaos around him and yet within the plot he's supposed to be a barely coping suicidal maniac who can't be left alone for a minute.
Again, I loved the character, but given some of his actions (eat the ice cream, talking about colour blindness, etc), did he feel more like a deus ex machina thrown into the plot than a real character to anyone else? Much as I loved him, I loved him like mork in happy days - perfect, funny, but not quite real
If you'll excuse the cliche, I really did like that every character failed. Normally at least one of the characters will get what they wanted but not this time. As individuals they failed but as an actual real family, they succeeded...at least for awhile. The film ended on a really high note but there's a crushing low around the corner, when they get back home and have to actually face the aftermath.
I don't know if I read anything deep from it but I really want/need to watch it again.
Oh and Olive was adorable.
I absolutely love the scene when they haul Grandad's corpse out of the hospital window - priceless!
He really is the saviour in the film imo. From teaching olive the dance routine, to telling his son that he's proud of him depsite his obvious downfalls, to the porn collection that stops his son getting arrested... Not the usual portrayal of a coke addict in a hollywood movie eh.