the movieGOOMBA

Americans have this thing about road trips in film. I don't know if there's some sort of spiritual experience that happens as you make your way across country. I've never been on one myself, but its like there's this universal understanding that road trips = finding yourself.

Done in the artsy, camp manner of most independent films, Little Miss Sunshine's basis is about an ordinary person's (or in this case, a family's) journey through the realities of life via the Road trip. A dark comedy, Little Miss Sunshine portrays a family with very individualized problems. There's the father whose lack of self esteem is marked by "WINNING!", the dirty grandfather who smokes pot, the closet femme fetale mother who smokes in secret and doesn't understand what her family needs, the depressed, suicidal uncle with a strong sense of reality (ironic huh?), the older brother whose taken a vow of silence (more on this later), and finally, Olive, the youngest child and the only bright light in this ridiculous family.

Little Miss Sunshine is a beauty pageant that Olive gets invited to compete in, and the entire family reluctantly makes the trip across country on a yellow bus. An ongoing theme of this film is insanity and happiness. I realize that these two ideas are kind of contradictory, but that is what this film is, contradiction.

For starters, there is the uncle who is considered to be mentally unstable, yet he is the one who immediately identifies the type of family dynamic he is dealing with. He is smart, well-rounded, and educated, all things associated with a healthy mind, yet doctor's tell him otherwise. The grandfather who is basically a dirty man, is also the person who is closest to Olive, the 8 year old daughter. He is the one who worked with Olive to get her pageant routine together. For hours and hours they worked together, and you could tell that this harsh, rough man had a soft spot for Olive. My favorite character, the silent brother, has great intuition regardless of seeming teenage angst. At first, his silence is depicted as anger and hositility. People in western culture are often uncomfortable with silence since it is often hard to tell what a person is thinking, yet this family seems to welcome it. What is also interesting is silence being the one thing Dwayne responds to the most. When he learns he is color blind and cannot become a fighter pilot, he breaks his vow of silence, and even his mother can't console him. Yet when Olive goes to "talk to him," all Olive does is sit with her arm around him in silence for a minute and Dwayne says "Okay" and stands up to rejoin the family as if they had just shared a long heart to heart. An interesting commentary by the writers or director of this film by making the van yellow. Yellow has traditionally been a symbol for both cheerful happiness and mental illness (Yellow Wallpaper crazy lady . . . interesting huh?).

After this whole crazy journey through life's complications personified into this one family, they attempt to make it to this beauty pageant for the sake of Olive. Its what will make her the most happy. They start off dragging their feet to go to this thing, and eventually push to get to the pageant, literally. They'll do whatever it takes, as a family (living or in death). And when Olive is judged, the entire family is judged. But by the end, do they care? No. Not one bit. They're a really messed up family in society's eyes, but they're still a family. Unlike the beginning when the family can't even stand to be together, in the end, the idea of family is definitely celebrated.