"Sunshine" Is It
Sunshine Is It
Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris' Little Miss Sunshine (Fox Searchlight, 7.26) is, at the very least, this year's Sideways -- a non-formulaic character-driven comedy created by people of similar attitude and talent and emotional complexity levels, with laughs are just as rich and uproarious and particular.
There are two big differences: (1) Sunshine is a family comedy -- a real family comedy about real people, as opposed to a piece of shite like Cheaper by the Dozen -- and not about screwed-up middle-aged guys, and (2) it may make a lot more money than Sideways.
(l. to r.) Gregg Kinnear, Steve Carell, Paul Dano, Toni Collette and Abigail Breslin in Little Miss Sunshine (Fox Searchlight, 7.26)
Or so it would seem to judge by what happened last night, when the L.A. Film Festival ended with a Sunshine screening at the Wadsworth. The place shook like the Eccles theatre did last January before a hopped-up crowd at the start of the Sundance Film Festival. I'm talking guffaws, laughs, horse laughs and one signi- ficant "awww." Plus heavy cheering and clapping and woo-woo's as it ended.
The amazing thing for me is that Sunshine goes into some very dark places at times, and yet it has the balls and the spirit to bounce right out of those places and make you laugh five or ten minutes later, like nothing happened.
Watch both cuts of the trailer -- the one on the Sunshine website and the one currently parked on Rotten Tomatoes -- and you'll have some idea of what I'm talking about.
It played just as well last night with me also -- no diminishment at all. I can see catching it at least another couple of times and then owning the DVD.
I don't know how big or how wide, but Sunshine is definitely a hit waiting to happen. It looks to me like a winner with all four quadrants. It may be a bit soft with young males at first, possibly, but that shouldn't last.
The only people who may not warm to this acidly funny and touching family comedy as much, possibly, are the hideous fastidious mothers out there who delight in transforming their daughters into Jon Benet Ramsey clones so they can win at junior-miss beauty pageants.
After you see Sunshine you'll know what I'm talking about. These women -- the whole junior-miss beauty pagent culture, in fact -- should be quietly rounded up and put on Army transport jets and flown to rural China and put to work on farming communes.
It's also starting to hit me that Sunshine has a real shot at picking up some critics awards and Oscar nominations -- Dayton and Faris for directing, Steve Carell and especially Paul Dano for Best Supporting Actor (the latter's performance is especially good because two-thirds of it is done non-verbally, and yet he hits it out of the park with every facial muscle inflection and eye-roll), Michael Arndt for Best Screenplay, and so on.
I just re-read my morning-after review of Sunshine that ran six months ago, so here it is again (most of it) and screw the quote marks:
Little Miss Sunshine doesn't exactly re-invent the wheel. It's just a smart family comedy-slash-road movie, but the last film that got so much good humor out of such dark subject matter was maybe David O. Russell's Flirting with Disaster, although Sunshine is a bit more of a wholesome, straight-up thing.
This is a film about hostility, feelings of futility, middle-aged career collapse, a troubled marriage, a fiercely alienated son, a dad who's a bit of an asshole, a sudden family death, a failed suicide...and it's often very funny and quite warm and so cleverly calculated and well-blended that it doesn't feel like anyone calculated anything.
Sundance director Geoff Gilmore wrote last January that Little Miss Sunshine possesses a kind of "Capra-esque lunacy." For me the word Capra (as in Frank) means cornball emotion and cloying stabs at manipulation...and Sunshine feels, to me, more natural (and naturally effective) than any Capra film I've ever seen.
And damned if Steve Carell isn't eight times sadder and gloomier in this thing than he was in the early portions of The 40 Year-Old Virgin, and if he isn't much funnier and more winning here than he was in that hit film from last summer. It's his best performance ever, no question.
Virgin director-writer Judd Apatow has been writing comedy for 15 years or so, and when he sees Little Miss Sunshine he's going to wish he could write something as good as what Michael Arndt has done, and direct a comedy of this type with this kind of naturalistic panache.
(l. to r.) Alan Arkin (as the family's heroin-snorting grandpa), Carrel, Dano, Breslin, Collette, Kinnear
Sunshine is basically about family ties holding strong under ghastly and horrific circumstances.
It's two days or so in the life of the can't-catch-a-break Hoover clan -- the vaguely dipshitty motivational speaker Richard (Gregg Kinnear), his sorely frustrated wife Sheryl (Toni Collette), Sheryl's crushed, post-suicidal brother (Carell), a curmud- geonly, drug-taking grandpa (Alan Arkin), the silent, sulking Dwayne (Paul Dano), and 7 year-old cutie-pie Olive (Abigail Breslin).
The action is about going on a car trip from hell to take Olive to a Little Miss Sun- shine beauty pageant in Redondo Beach...and wouldn't you just know the pageant itself would also be a nightmare? But this family has an improvised cure for that.
It's not just that this all feels unexpectedly funny, but fresh and unforced. So much so that it's easy to ignore a couple of scenes that don't entirely work. It's not quite as refined or soulful as Alexander Payne's Sideways, but Sunshine has to be a hit -- it can't not be.
Posted by Jeffrey Wells on July 3, 2006 at 10:33 AM
comment #1
Pepe says ...
Interesting. I certainly will be first in line when it comes out.
Btw, when are you going to update the Oscar Balloon with all the information you've got from more than half a year that has gone by?
Posted by Pepe at July 3, 2006 2:35 PM
comment #2
Jeffrey Wells says ...
I should have updated that effing Oscar Balloon weeks ago. I'm ashamed of how out of date it is.
Posted by Jeffrey Wells at July 3, 2006 3:22 PM
comment #3
VoiceOfReason says ...
Is Paul Dano playing DDL's son in There Will Be Blood? Anyone else hear that?
Posted by VoiceOfReason at July 3, 2006 4:05 PM
comment #4
Pedro says ...
Doesn't EVERY movie that plays at a film festival get applause at the end? Means absolutely nothing when it comes to gauging expectations of release.
Posted by Pedro at July 3, 2006 4:45 PM
comment #5
Shell says ...
"Updating the Oscar Balloon" sounds obscene.
I agree with Pedro RE every movie that plays at a film festival getting applause at the end; the audience that I saw the dreadful Tough Guys Don't Dance with gave director/writer Norman Mailer a standing ovation. That was, of course, in Toronto, and we are a largely very polite bunch.
Posted by Shell at July 3, 2006 5:10 PM
comment #6
asd says ...
That's right Jeff, keep pushing Happy Texas 2 as Oscar bait, let's see how that works out in the end. Comparisons to Sideways are baffling (unless it's just a knee-jerk thing that happens when the Fox Searchlight logo comes up) as all the elements that made the Payne film so unique (it's erudite wit often hand in hand with frat boy hijinks, its currents of sadness and loneliness and disappointment, genuinely human performances, etc...) are nowhere to be found here.
LMS is an ugly film (and not just aesthetically) that wherever possible will go for the easiest joke imaginable (by the way, simply name-checking Nietzsche does not make a film smarter). Like old people cussing up a storm? Jokes about gay porno mags? Greg Kinear playing the smarmy guy who learns to be a better person for the 100th time? Group hugs? This thing's as edgy as a sitcom on ABC.
Your out-of-left-field 40 Year Old Virgin bashing aside, it's possible people will flock to this for Carrell, but expect a lot of disappointed fans as the character he plays spends 80% of the film in a near catatonic state (you could easily replace Carrell with David Schwimmer with negligible difference). Like every character in the film he's barely blessed with a second dimension, hitting the same sullen note for two hours.
You're also contradicting yourself left and right here. Is it "a non-formulaic character-driven comedy" or is it "a car trip from hell"? (Car falling apart around them, afraid to get pulled over because of something incriminating in the trunk, getting lost, missing your exit, the mad dash against time where they're driving like Smokey and the Bandit over grass and sidewalks? Sounds pretty formulaic to me)
I have no idea how this will play with wide audiences. I wasn't at the Eccles for the premiere (does an ovation at a festival really many anything? I have yet to see a film at festival that didn't receive a rapturous response) but everyone I spoke to back in January reiterated much of what I felt.
Posted by asd at July 3, 2006 5:41 PM
comment #7
Anonymous says ...
Just curious, ASD, but have you even seen this movie?
Posted by Anonymous at July 3, 2006 9:19 PM
comment #8
asd says ...
At Sundance, yes. Exactly the sort of disposable film that occupies the media's attention while more deserving, lower-profile films wither on the vine. Can't rule out bitterness entirely on this one, but I also know shit when I see it.
Posted by asd at July 4, 2006 12:05 AM
comment #9
Dave K. says ...
Wow... well, all I can say is I saw LMS at Sundance as well, and it was one of my favorite movies there. I saw it at the 8:30am screening at the Library the morning after its big Eccles prem... I've rarely been in a theater when the audience was so totally into it, the laughing so raucous, bouts of spontaneous applause... along with the unexpectedly charming QUINCEANERA, LMS was the best movie I saw at Sundance this year.
We're all entitled to our opinions, but the raucous audience alone makes this a run-don't-walk when it finally releases. Seriously, it's hilarious.
Posted by Dave K. at July 4, 2006 8:22 AM
comment #10
AH says ...
While I have no problems with the review of the movie, why does Mr. Wells have to bash other movies/directors/writers while reviewing movies that they had no connection to.
Shouldn't one just review the movie and not disparage others?
Posted by AH at July 4, 2006 10:22 AM
comment #11
Steve C. says ...
"Shouldn't one just review the movie and not disparage others?"
Ah, I remember my first time here...
Posted by Steve C. at July 4, 2006 1:04 PM
comment #12
Dixon Steele says ...
Good point AH. THE 40 YEAR-OLD VIRGIN was one of the funniest movies in years. Jeff, of course, hated it. Ever notice his blind spot for comedy?
But really, Jeff, what the hell does VIRGIN even have to do with LMS? The Writers Gulld nominated VIRGIN as the of the best written comedies of the year. But I guess you know more about screenwriting than they do...NOT.
LMS sounds like an edgier kind of comedy, complete with a heroin-addicted grandpa. Nothing wrong with that, I look forward to seeing it.
But why compare apples to oranges. I like them both, as do most people.
Posted by Dixon Steele at July 5, 2006 12:39 AM
comment #13
delbomber says ...
The man hated 'Virgin,' yet loved 'Wedding Crashers,' despite lamenting the "air going out of the balloon" at the end. A good analogy, for baseball fans, is a breaking ball...funny, funny, funny...then falls off the end of the table and...nothing.
Drama is drama, you can usually bank on Wells' word...but as for humor, well, the man dislikes 'Ghostbusters' and asks us to remove Bill Murray for perspective. Ok, remove the seats from your car and let me know how it rides...
Posted by delbomber at July 5, 2006 5:46 PM