Little Miss Sunshine

(Movie Review)

This film just got released on video in Japan this week. Since I had heard so many good things about it from so many people, I decided to check it out.

It's not a perfect film, but it is definitely entertaining, very funny at times and worth watching.

There are no huge stars in this film, but there's an impressive cast of actors that you kind of recognize from small parts in other movies. For example "The Daily Show" alum Steve Carell plays the uncle recovering from a suicide attempt, although it was such a different role for him I didn't even realize it was him until halfway through the movie.

Although it might be tempting to describe this as a movie about real people with real problems, the hand of Hollywood exaggeration is at play here. The way this family just experiences one huge problem after another is a bit over the top, and probably puts this film more in the category of "Worst vacation ever/Road trip disaster" films (like "National Lampoon's Vacation", "Planes, trains, Automobiles", "Road Trip", etc, etc, etc) than a family drama.

Not that I'm complaining mind you. I've seen a few films that tried to imitate real life, and they bored the pants off of me. I think most of us go into movies if not for pure escapism, than at least to watch people with far more interesting or screwed up lives than our own.

Shoko watched this movie with me, and was particularly interested in the child beauty contest scenes at the end. There are no child beauty contests in Japan, but the American phenomenon of child beauty pageants entered the Japanese popular consciousness after the JonBenet Ramsey case (which was almost bigger news in Japan than it was in the U.S., if such a thing were possible).

I don't know how accurate the scene of the child beauty pageant was in this movie. Perhaps the hand of Hollywood exaggeration is at work once again. But if half of what was shown in this movie is true, the people who run these beauty pageants and the parents who participate should all be locked away for child abuse.

Link of the Day
Commentary of Emma Lazarus (via Tom from Guam). Sad, but true.

Little Miss Sunshine: Movie Review (Scripted)