Little Miss Sunshine...

[fajrdrako]

If you've been paying attention you'll remember that I don't usually like comedies, but I'd heard enough good about Little Miss Sunshine to want to see it, and besides, it has Alan Arkin in it - I do like his comedies, ever since seeing The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming at an impressionable age. And Catch-22.

So. Little Miss Sunshine. As I might have predicted, Alan Arkin was magnificent as Grandpa, but he wasn't my favourite character - that was Steve Carell as Frank, who was quite wonderful - a depressed gay academic. My kind of guy! I also liked Dwayne, the depressed teenager who won't talk and who hates everyone.

It's a very clever movie. I enjoyed it. I laughed. But it reminded me why I don't much like comedies - it seemed very contrived. Cleverly contrived, but contrived all the same. All the characters seemed more like a 'type' than real.

And of course I liked the theme - that's it's stupid to divide the world into winners and losers. Ought to go without saying, don't you think?

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

We watched it over the break--I had the exact same reaction.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I thought the little girl who played Olive was very good, too. But hers was a very well-written part.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Yes, and yes. There were patches of really great writing and acting--stitched together by hoary comedy cliches (dealing stupidly with dead bodies, the race-to-the-finish-line wild drive, complete with jolting over traffic islands) but some excellent moments as well.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

All of that. And though some of the characters seemed to change psychologically - Richard in particular - it wasn't entirely clear to me how or why they'd changed.

Not that this is a criticism, excactly. The movie was all it needed to be. But it suffered from the pattern of its genre.