Every so often the best looking man in the Retired Orangemen
Fantasy Football League goes to the movies (yes, just like the
rest of you). Sometimes I go with one of my many lady friends.
Still other times I go with fellow ROFFL members. After viewing
these movies, I form an opinion. Here in a new column, exclusive
to retiredorangemen.com, is Five Second Stare at the Movies.
There are 5 ratings:
HANDSOME
GOOD-LOOKING
DECENT
IF I HAD A FEW DRINKS IN ME
GROSS
Fantasy Football League goes to the movies (yes, just like the
rest of you). Sometimes I go with one of my many lady friends.
Still other times I go with fellow ROFFL members. After viewing
these movies, I form an opinion. Here in a new column, exclusive
to retiredorangemen.com, is Five Second Stare at the Movies.
There are 5 ratings:
HANDSOME
GOOD-LOOKING
DECENT
IF I HAD A FEW DRINKS IN ME
GROSS
 |
What an absolute good time. From the first frames of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris’s Little Miss Sunshine we
are smiling.
The film wastes no times introducing its characters. There is the super optimistic Dad, played absolutely perfectly by
Greg Kinnear (who I’m starting to become a big fan of), the always honest mother (Toni Collette, good as always),
the Heroin addicted grandfather (the one-liner genius that is Alan Arkin), the Frederick Nietzsche loving son (the
extremely good Paul Dano), the gay uncle Frank who failed at committing suicide (ladies and gentlemen, Golden
Globe nominee, Steve Carrell), and of course Little Miss Sunshine Olive, played by Abigail Breslin, who is about as
good as a child actor can get.
The movie starts off at the Hoover’s house where the family is eating dinner with Uncle Frank who has just returned
from the Hospital after recovering from an attempted suicide. This leads to interesting dinner conversation and is a
scene Kinnear steals. While eating Olive gets the message that she has won a spot to the Little Miss Sunshine
competition in California (the Hoovers live in AZ). So it’s time for the Hoovers to pack up the old Volkswagen and
head out to the competition, whether older brother Dwayne likes it or not.
The movie borrows its formula from all different types of flicks. You can credit “Ordinary People” for being the first
movie for showing the decay of the suburban family and there are tons of road trip films that this movie gets its
material from. The difference is how defined the characters are. You have to give credit to the script by Michael
Arndt and the actors (all of which are amazing). There are lines of absolute genius. For example, when little Olive
asks her grandfather if she’s pretty he quickly responds that he’s “madly in love with you and it's not because of your
brains or your personality” and the delivery of Paul Dano when he finally speaks, “If I want to fly, I'll find a way to fly.
You do what you love, and fuck the rest”
Little Miss Sunshine is essentially a buddy/road trip movie except the buddies are a part of one, big, abnormal
family. If the film has a weakness, it’s that sometimes the dialogue becomes too over-the-top and the film becomes a
caricature of itself, especially Grandpa, who gets all the easy jokes (sometimes too easy). But those occurrences
are few and far between.
The film’s climax takes place at (where else) the Little Miss Sunshine competition where Olive performs and the family
unites. I was a little under whelmed by the Little Miss Sunshine competition but by the time the movie ended I was so
invested in the characters I was just happy to most of them alive and well.
are smiling.
The film wastes no times introducing its characters. There is the super optimistic Dad, played absolutely perfectly by
Greg Kinnear (who I’m starting to become a big fan of), the always honest mother (Toni Collette, good as always),
the Heroin addicted grandfather (the one-liner genius that is Alan Arkin), the Frederick Nietzsche loving son (the
extremely good Paul Dano), the gay uncle Frank who failed at committing suicide (ladies and gentlemen, Golden
Globe nominee, Steve Carrell), and of course Little Miss Sunshine Olive, played by Abigail Breslin, who is about as
good as a child actor can get.
The movie starts off at the Hoover’s house where the family is eating dinner with Uncle Frank who has just returned
from the Hospital after recovering from an attempted suicide. This leads to interesting dinner conversation and is a
scene Kinnear steals. While eating Olive gets the message that she has won a spot to the Little Miss Sunshine
competition in California (the Hoovers live in AZ). So it’s time for the Hoovers to pack up the old Volkswagen and
head out to the competition, whether older brother Dwayne likes it or not.
The movie borrows its formula from all different types of flicks. You can credit “Ordinary People” for being the first
movie for showing the decay of the suburban family and there are tons of road trip films that this movie gets its
material from. The difference is how defined the characters are. You have to give credit to the script by Michael
Arndt and the actors (all of which are amazing). There are lines of absolute genius. For example, when little Olive
asks her grandfather if she’s pretty he quickly responds that he’s “madly in love with you and it's not because of your
brains or your personality” and the delivery of Paul Dano when he finally speaks, “If I want to fly, I'll find a way to fly.
You do what you love, and fuck the rest”
Little Miss Sunshine is essentially a buddy/road trip movie except the buddies are a part of one, big, abnormal
family. If the film has a weakness, it’s that sometimes the dialogue becomes too over-the-top and the film becomes a
caricature of itself, especially Grandpa, who gets all the easy jokes (sometimes too easy). But those occurrences
are few and far between.
The film’s climax takes place at (where else) the Little Miss Sunshine competition where Olive performs and the family
unites. I was a little under whelmed by the Little Miss Sunshine competition but by the time the movie ended I was so
invested in the characters I was just happy to most of them alive and well.
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