This is topic Little Miss Sunshine (2006) in forum Film Handlers' Movie Reviews at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.
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Posted by Sam Graham (Member # 2889) on 08-19-2006, 07:51 PM:
CINEMA: Harkins Northfield 18, Denver, CO
AUDITORIUM: 12
PRESENTATION: 35mm/Dolby Digital
PRESENTATION PROBLEMS: Slightly grainy picture; annoying woman in audience yelling "Wait! Your Slushee!" at the screen during the gas station scene
RATING: Two and one half stars (out of four)
WARNING: There are two types of people in this world...Winners, and Spoilers
In 2000 years, the planet's climate will have changed. Continents will be altered, civilizations laid to waste. But this scratchy Herculon seat fabric will still be here, good as new.
This place kind of reminds me of if Regal decided to cross-breed an Edwards and Century plex with an emphasis on tackiness, then abandoned the project in time for AMC to come in with their presentation equipment. No...AMC has better sound.
"Little Miss Sunshine" is a road flick that builds to a single joke. The joke is one of the funniest things projected onto a screen this year. Getting to it isn't a complete waste of time, but it's a bit bloated. There's one other moment where the audience collectively laughed out loud in the film, and it's the line leading into the joke. There ARE other laughs, but based on audience reaction, they're mostly left to the individual.
You know what I don't understand? Why Toni Collette is attractive. She IS attractive...I just can't figure out WHY.
Posted by Greg Mueller (Member # 17) on 08-31-2006, 04:38 PM:
I liked the horn bit on the VW bus. The end was pretty predictable, but funny in an "oh no!" sort of way. It reminded be a lot of "Vacation"
Posted by William Clark (Member # 3938) on 09-03-2006, 09:41 AM:
I kind of interpreted the film as a sad social commentary. Either way, the movie just kind of puts you off. It's a pretty messed up movie, depicting a rather dysfunctional family. I may have not laughed out loud much at it while I was watching it, but I just keep thinking about it. It's a hilarious film. I loved it.
Posted by Don Anderson (Member # 397) on 09-08-2006, 12:56 PM:
Gee, it kinda reminded me of my family! Disfunctional to the max! Loved the film. Real individuals dealing with real situations. Gotta love the Miss Sunshine pageant. Society at its best, nothing but asshole parents push push pushing their kids into something that is not realistic, by any means. Grandpa's coaching and dance tips were a blast. Kind of a ![[fu]](graemlins/fu.gif)
you to the rest of the group. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. A must see film by any means. 5 stars.
Posted by Anslem Rayburn (Member # 1267) on 09-09-2006, 05:41 AM:
Great. Every member of the cast was perfect. Writing, directing, it was all great. Best movie I have seen this year. I'm glad we are playing it, and it has kept the same level of business since we got it (good, but not great). I can see this playing for a long time at a decent level. Word of mouth is fantastic, I have yet to hear a single negative comment about it from anyone in town.
Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 09-09-2006, 10:32 AM:
Good show. This is one of the few current films that is actually worth seeing. I really enjoyed it.
Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 09-10-2006, 06:03 PM:
Cinemark 17 in Springfield, 1:15PM today, House #6, SR-D. Trailers were very scratched and dirty, feature was intermittently scratched (horizontal) with too many black flecks of dirt. FilmGuard needed. Attendance around 40.
I liked it a lot. The bit with the stuck horn had the audience rolling in the aisles. Well anyway I did a little rolling. The writing and acting were perfect. Highly recommended.
Posted by Ian Bailey (Member # 1752) on 09-13-2006, 05:25 AM:
Sam Toni Collette is like the rest of us Aussies-Ugly but beautiful!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by Steve Scott (Member # 630) on 09-13-2006, 12:31 PM:
Maybe I'm just too desensitized to emotional situations that try to come across as dark, but Sunshine never took off for me. Just a lot of forced situations highlighting a lightly quirky, accurately average family...
Oh sure, it's a well assembeled film. No aspect of of the story is hidden from the shot. Though nothing in the film really carries the weight or the individuality in any of its characters; I think that's where the underlying humor and style didn't go deep enough for me. By the end of the film it was like I had seen a rough portrait of a more average family than the satire was working lightly to sell.
I hardly laughed at all & was only warmed over by the road trip sequence. That was genuinely respectable. No other aspect of the film seemed to succeed in working it's magic on me. Overrated.
I hope Lagoon's other print of Sunshine isn't as in the crapper as the one I saw. An absolutely awful plate cut, too. I won't go on about the lamp or reflector, or whatever's making #1 dim, there. Another low-level SR presentation, too. Though, in digital the right channel doesn't seem to be present... At least there weren't any reversions.
Posted by Chris Hipp (Member # 1788) on 09-17-2006, 08:19 PM:
I thought it started off pretty slow, but the last two reels were great.
Posted by Jennifer Pan (Member # 2035) on 09-22-2006, 01:42 AM:
Just got back from seeing it and I really enjoyed it. I wasn't too sure what to expect... I kinda expected it to be weird. But I really liked it.
The silent kid.... hot. ![[sex]](graemlins/sex.gif)
Posted by Carol May (Member # 4068) on 12-17-2006, 10:32 PM:
I've seen maybe a dozen movies all year. I'm starting to catch up a bit with DVDs, but there is an awful lot of mediocre and sub-mediocre stuff out there. LMS is by far my #1 pick of the year. The characters unquestionably had "issues" but they were not bad people. They were trying.
Best of all, I loved the pagent. When all the mothers were aghast at Olive's strip tease that her grandfather taught her, not comprehending that they were raising little wh*res themselves, it was wonderful.
Posted by Jerry Axelsson (Member # 3175) on 01-05-2007, 08:16 PM:
... simply overrated
Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 01-27-2007, 06:03 PM:
I didn't get to see Little Miss Sunshine in theaters, just had to settle for watching it on DVD.
Overall, I thought this was a very good character driven comedy. Viewers can interpret it on a more than a couple levels. The whole road trip angle is a common metaphorical device in lots of movies, and it threatens to become a cliché for its overuse. Luckily the characters in this movie had enough unique charm (not to mention great performances) to make the road trip device work.
I loved the payoff in the end in how it made a mockery of child beauty pageants. Abigail Breslin's performance as Olive was great. It took a little while for me to figure out where I saw her before: as the little girl in Signs who tells Mel Gibson in deadpan form, "Daddy, there's a monster outside my window."
While this is a good movie, it is not perfect. I give it three out of four stars. I must deduct one star from the rating for two reasons.
One (most important): the non-stop pile of obstacles along the road trip had me thinking "audience manipulation alert" from time to time. Sure, all movies are about manipulating audiences. But when you feel like the manipulation is coming from a contrived area then you get pulled out of the movie.
Two (not quite so important, but it's an issue that really bugs me): for a road trip movie, this show had a very retarded sense of geography.
Just what the hell kind of circuitous route did these people take to get from Albuquerque to Redondo Beach?
33 minutes into the movie, they're shown driving past an Eastbound entrance to Interstate 10. Then they're driving on some two lane roads. Just a few shots later, they're driving on I-40 through the I-17 interchange in Flagstaff. Huh?
Why go anywhere near I-10? When driving from Albuquerque to L.A., anyone will stay on I-40 to Barstow and not see I-10 until hitting San Bernadino. Did the filmmakers not see Cars? I-40 is a highly influential route!
Maybe the filmmakers really loved that particular location. They must have liked it enough to put it in the movie trailer. Perhaps it was a 2nd unit pickup shot done sometime later. At any rate, any filmmaker should know better. Frame the shot without the damned I-10 sign in there. Or spend a little money on some CGI work to change that I-10 sign to an I-40 sign. Or better yet, find another beautiful, mountainous shot along I-40 itself. There's mountains all over the place between Albuquerque and Barstow.
Lots of movies pull this kind of shit with geography and I spot it all the time. Just who do they think they're fooling?
Posted by Jason Black (Member # 684) on 03-11-2007, 02:13 PM:
Just watched this flick last night...
Thought it was a good mirror of modern society. If you are the prettiest you are often overlooked by most in society.
It's a truly sad fact that this is how most folks look at you today...
No matter what, as long as you are true to yourself.. which Olive was, you will always be a winner...
I did find the final act hystercial... LOL.. dirty old granpa... LOL
Posted by Mike Heenan (Member # 392) on 03-14-2007, 05:45 PM:
Bobby, settle down, it's just a movie... besides if they didn't take the route they did, they probably wouldn't have made it here to Scottsdale ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 03-14-2007, 06:33 PM:
Oh, I've already settled down...seeing as how I wrote my review around six weeks ago.
![[eyes]](graemlins/eyes.gif)
Nevertheless, movie geography is often very very retarded.
Posted by John Wilson (Member # 269) on 01-04-2008, 08:49 AM:
Finally caught this on DVD last night.
A fine film with a winning performance by Alan Arkin (Serpentine, Frank!) Many times Suzi and I laughed out loud. It just tickled our fancy.
Was told today it did very well when it played at the Ritz in Sydney where I'm working. No wonder...
4 out of 5 ![[thumbsup]](graemlins/thumbsup.gif)
Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 01-04-2008, 03:56 PM:
The only thing I remember about this movie was being nauseated during the beauty pageant with all of those little girls. Who dresses their young children up like that? Phuggin' sickos.
Posted by Carol May (Member # 4068) on 01-12-2008, 05:55 PM:
"The only thing I remember about this movie was being nauseated during the beauty pageant with all of those little girls. Who dresses their young children up like that? Phuggin' sickos. "
Glad you're not a pedophile, Joe! But, that was the point of the whole pageant. Greg Kinnear and family were supposed to be the abnormal outcasts, but it was really the serious pageant contenders and their families who needed to rethink their lives.
Posted by Lyle Romer (Member # 1266) on 01-12-2008, 06:07 PM:
The worst thing was that all the other pageant girls were actual "child beauty queens" or whatever they are called. It wasn't exaggerated for humor, people really trot their kids out like that.
Posted by System Notices (Member # 2357) on 03-23-2014, 05:59 PM:
It has been 2261 days since the last post.
Posted by Terry Lynn-Stevens (Member # 7349) on 03-23-2014, 05:59 PM:
Finally got around to seeing this movie, in 35mm no less. The 8 year old print was in pretty good condition. It even had the DTS discs.
What an fantastic movie!
What I don't understand is how Alan Arkin won an Academy Award for this movie? It was just as bad a Jack Palance winning for City Slickers.
Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 03-23-2014, 09:38 PM:
Jack Palance's was considered sort of a recognition of a long career at the time.
Besides, he was excellent in City Slickers.