Little Miss Sunshine
Little Miss Sunshine
dir. Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris
USA, 2006 - 101
Meet the Hoover family: Olive, a seven-year-old, slightly pudgy, aspiring beauty queen; her father, Richard, a struggling motivational speaker; and her mom, Sheryl, who has to bring her Proust scholar/brother, Frank, home after his failed suicide attempt. Frank has to stay with Sheryl's Nietzsche-worshipping son, Dwayne, who has taken a vow of silence until he is old enough to be a fighter pilot. Then there's Grandpa, recently kicked out of his nursing home for snorting heroin. They all set off to take Olive to the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant. This madcap comedy literally transports a Capraesque lunacy to the present. And like the films of that master of farce, this delicious, abundant, comic storytelling sends up American values even as it draws out the humanity hidden in the most misfit of families.
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