Do you have these moments where, a few minutes into a movie you realize, “Oh my God, this is going to be great,” or, “Gasp! This will surely make me cry in the end.” and whatever similar presupposed realizations? And most of the time, it wasn’t really great great (well it was good), not really moving to tears, in other words not quite what you expected? If been having a lot of that lately, and it’s a good thing because that means I’ve seen a lots of good movies lately. And 2006 really has (or had) A LOT to offer.
There was Casino Royale, which I’ve seen second to last, which had a kick-ass chase sequence at the beginning. It was actually good – I never thought Bond did dark (though, I am not a Bond fan to begin with). Before that was Happy Feet, very funny, very EPIC. It’s rare that I get moved by raw imagery taken detached from the movie’s context, but Happy Feet had a couple of really amazing sequences that are worthy of a concert piece (last I felt like this it was toward the travelling-by-tumultous-sea scene on Belleville Rendez-vous). Then there were Borat (hilarious) and The Prestige (good, but need a re-watch for full appreciation). And in between the movie houses are the films enjoyed from home: A Scanner Darkly and An Inconvenient Truth (which is sort of an exception from the idea of this essay; no preconceptions occured to me, but it was surprisingly engaging all throughout – and to think it was 1am when I began watching it!).
All these movies were good, and very good even. But alas, they did not fill my satisfaction to its very maximum. Until -
Little Miss Sunshine (LMS). A little movie about a dysfunctional family on a road trip. The premise is simple enough, but you will find that characters here are as interesting, endearing and funny as they can get, without turning any of them into one-dimensional caricatures or stereotypes. This is important, because this is the key that sets LMS apart from other films of similar theme.
The characters, the great actors, are what you go to see this movie for – but that’s not all. It is also VERY FUNNY, one creative gag after the next. There is just no lull in this otherwise drama-comedy.
But that’s not all. Beneath the narrative is the understated commentary that can only be found on a handful of American… and um, indie (it’s always the indies that seem to get it right!), movies1: about the Everyman, the man who Does Not Always Get What He Wants. About the underachiever, the anti-societal, the apathetic, the unpop, the non-winner. The LOSERS, in the case of this movie. And this is great, and healthy, I think, because it shows us that it is not always about winning – not everyone is an FBI agent, or a knight, or a mutant, or a serial killer, or a symbologist bent on the Holy Grail. That, while this world is about beauty and whoever is most attractive gets the most out of their lives, one does not actually have to possess something special to be worth telling about. Yes, it is still interesting to be normal.
But I digress – this is only the “inspirational” (not really an apt word, heh) after-effect of the movie’s undertones, and is the least of the its priorities. Little Miss Sunshine is a great story – a mini-voyage, if you will – and one should not get distracted with my passionate diatribe up there. I haven’t liked a movie so much since V for Vendetta. This is my best movie of 2006 (at least for now).
1Movies that come to mind: Ghost World, American Splendor, Sideways.
