Little Miss Sunshine (2006)

Little Miss Sunshine is a nice comedy-drama movie centred around a family of four, the Hoovers, showing the life of an unusual American family who all deal with their own personal struggles. Richard, the father, is a wannabe motivational speaker who is deluded by the hopes of being successful. A long-suffering mother, Sheryl, who is trying to keep the family organised and together. Dwayne, the son who took a vow of silence until he achieves his dreams of getting into the air force. And finally, a young optimistic girl called Olive who hopes of winning a pageant which sparked the whole family road trip, hence the title Little Miss Sunshine. Joining the family on the trip is Sheryl’s gay, suicidal brother and Edwin, Richard’s father who was rejected from his retirement home for taking drugs.

This movie is wrapped around the idea of this family making the long journey to enter their daughter in a pageant. The sanity of the family is stretched as everyone is having to deal with each other’s problems. This idea could cause viewers to imagine how shallow and fake beauty contests usually are. How they seem positive and fun, but there is a lot of stress backstage that few people realise. This is how they present the family, at the start we think of them as a normal family who just fail to understand each other, but as you look deeper into each character, you can see that have realistic yet exaggerated, problematic lives. The problems they encounter in their old Volkswagen are convenient plot devices that drive the story onward. Despite this, it is the general detail of their characterisation and how their more annoying quirks outshines their positives ones.

The movie continuously emphasises the point that family is forever, no matter what circumstances or problems. They will always be there for you, having your back no matter what.

I enjoyed this movie to an extent. The drama was quite engaging and constant. The characters were usually always bickering or disagreeing on something. Although it is the sort of movie that you would watch once, it was a nice difference to all the action and romance movies that are bombarding us.