On a scale of one to ten, I give Little Miss Sunshine an Eleventy-Three.
I laughed the entire movie, and am still convinced that Alan Arkin makes every movie better with his presence. Discuss.
by John Cole| 87 Comments
This post is in: Movies
On a scale of one to ten, I give Little Miss Sunshine an Eleventy-Three.
I laughed the entire movie, and am still convinced that Alan Arkin makes every movie better with his presence. Discuss.
Comments are closed.
[…] Only twenty-four? I have commenters who can generate 24 nasty comments on a thread about… Little Miss Sunshine. […]
Darrell
John, I usually agree with your taste in movies, but I give this one only a 5 or 6 out of ten. Worth watching, but not that great. The end was too prolonged and corny for me. The feel of it was a lot like “Sideways” to me, which was also entertaining, but nothing to add to the movie collection in my opinion.
I agree though that Alan Arken’s performance added a lot to the film. He is a character.
Krista
I’ve been wanting to see that, actually. (Then again, there are so many movies I’ve been meaning to see, yet haven’t.) After spending xmas with the nephews and watching kiddie Christmas movies over and over again, I feel like pouring myself some rye and watching Sin City, or something equally sans any sort of sweetness.
DoubtingThomas
Definitely the best picture I’ve seen all year. Too bad the Oscars rarely go to comedies… this movie has something everyone can identify with and yes, Alan Arkin is wonderful.
It takes a sense of humor to appreciate Little Miss Sunshine, so it’s not surprising Darrell found it “not that great”, but it does surprise me that he spent his cash on something that came from liberal Hollywood. I don’t think the flick has been sanctioned by the GOP, so he must be risking his membership by admitting he’s seen the film. I’ll have to make my way over to Powerline and see what those folks say about the flick. Something tells me the consensus there will be very similar to Darrell’s musings.
Darrell
Top 3 movies that I’ve rented lately:
Inside Man
Match Point
Asylum
Pooh
I was MONSTROUSLY skeptical when walking into the theater (there is a certain genre of comedic-drama that has never really worked for me, right there in that Royal Tannenbaums/Bottle Rocket zone. LMS seemed of a piece with those from the previews.) And I also laughed the whole damn time. Alan Arkin, Steve Carrell and the older brother (Paul Dano) are all hi-llarious.
I dare you to tell me that the biker dude going “YEAH!” near the end wasn’t the best comic beat of any movie this year.
Tsulagi
Don’t think I’d go to an “Eleventy-Three,” but easily a 7.5. We rented and watched it on Xmas Eve. Definitely worth the rental fee. Don’t want to give any spoilers, but the little girl’s performance cracked me up. Something to remember grandpa by.
Darrell
Please.. the end was a little stupid and long with Olive’s dance to ‘Superfreak’. At first it was funny, but it went on and on and on.
ThymeZone
Next, Darrell’s list of his three favorite skin diseases.
Tsulagi
Not surprised Darrell didn’t like the ending. A movie reviewer on Dobson’s really hip and groovy Plugged In Online site hated it too. Birds of a feather and all that I guess.
BTW, if you want to see the movie but don’t want spoilers, don’t read the Dobsonite review. They dissect it and of course even count the number of times the f-word is used.
Pooh
How should it have ended?
“Now you know your place, fatty?” or something like that?
Kirby
Definitely one of my all-time favourites. It’s a fanastic movie.
Kirby
I got so excited I forgot how to spell fantastic.
Pooh
So Kirby, are you looking forward to the new Fanastic Four movie (note that I passed up on the obvious pr0n title joke)
mycfile
OK, I felt the same way you do about Alan Arkin. “The In-Laws” may be the best buddy comedy ever (“Serpentine!”).
But this movie changed all that. And it even had Christopher Lee!
http://imdb.com/title/tt0086189/
I rented it from Netflix and sat in stunned, abject horror throughout the entire thing. The pie and whitefish fight in the deli finished me off. :)
John Cole
PPGAZ, TSUALGI:
There is no reason to take Darrell’s mild disagreement about the end of the movie and turn it into a vehicle for personal and/or petty attacks. Please knock it off.
ThymeZone
Oh yeah, I forgot, Darrell can say anything to anybody. I can be “scum” for being a liberal, but heaven forbid anyone embarass him in front of company.
WTF, man?
ThymeZone
And, you decide to pretend to be keeping order in a thread about a dumbass movie? Where were you on one of any number of days when Darrell was shitting 100 articles on a serious thread and calling anyone who disagreed with him every rhetorical name in the book?
Again, WTF?
John Cole
It’s Christmas and this is a movie thread. Can’t we all just get along?
SeesThroughIt
You know who this is totally true about? Bruce Campbell. Oh hell yeah.
ThymeZone
Christmas was two days ago.
Get along? Yeah, sure. You leave us here to deal with Darrell and then scold when we’re not all sharing ice cream when you get back?
Okay, whatever. I suppose this is your idea of a good laugh.
Jane Finch
You must be a communist, because I loved it too!
Anderson
Jeez, people, doesn’t the chip on your shoulder ever hurt?
Like Darrell, I liked Match Point, but I just didn’t think the ending — kitchen encounter with the ghosts of his victims — worked. Wooden acting, perhaps, but I would’ve hated to have to try delivering those lines myself.
As for Little Miss Sunshine, it was cute, but I didn’t think it was as great as some do. Did anything raise it above “cute”? What did I miss? Or was cute enough?
Kyle
“On a scale of one to ten, I give Little Miss Sunshine an Eleventy-Three.”
Fuckin’ a, dude. Double fuckin’ a. I love that movie. And fuckin’ Ann Althouse didn’t like it — bonus!
Fruitbat
Gotta agree with you about Arkin, John. “The In-Laws” may be the funniest American slapstick buddy movie ever made. His bit parts make a merely enjoyable film memorable (“So I Married an Axe Murderer”), a splendid movie wonderful (“Grosse Pointe Blank”), and a disappointing adaptation tolerable (“Catch 22”). I haven’t seen “Captain Incredible,” but it may be the exception that proves the rule.
Salty Party Snax
I’ve seen the previews. Opted for Babel instead this week. Maybe next time I get to the theatre.
BTW: Big Bob Woodward story tomorrow in the Wash post. In an interview that Gerald Ford asked to be held until after his death, he basically says Dick, Rummy and their pocket puppet Georgie were idiots foir going into Iraq. It’s up on the WaPo site.
Tsulagi
Well, excuuuussssseee me. I merely mentioned Darrell and a Dobson reviewer both didn’t like the ending. I would think for Bush lovers that would be taken as a compliment. Something to be proud of. You saying Darrell in line with Dobson thinking in this instance is a personal, petty attack? That sounds like a personal judgment call to me. He could have been beaming when he read my comment.
ThymeZone
Fine, arguing with frigging Darrell because you guys don’t have the sense to get rid of him, cranking out top grade posts with humor and style and keeping your page views up while you sleep on your mother’s couch somewhere isn’t even worth a “thanks” …. so be it.
Happy movie talk? Let’s all get along?
Best movie I’ve seen lately?: Empire Falls on HBO.
demimondian
Meh. Me, I don’t much like any movie, so I can go all Scrooge on you, Cole?
I’ve got new speakers, and a new amplifier, and an acoustically lovely space that they’re now sitting in. (No carpet in the family room here, kids!) I can hear the pedal being set and released as Gould plays. I can localize the strings on the piano from left to right as he plays.
Pure heaven. I think Die Zauberflaut is up next; I’m definitely in the mood for listening to the Queen of the Night sing about revenge. (“And if you will not kill him, then you are no daughter of mine…”)
DougJ
Word.
Anderson
I think Die Zauberflaut is up next;
So which recording are you putting on? And why am I picturing you as the guy in the Memorex commercial from way back when, with the Valkyries’ ride blowing your drink off the table?
demimondian
The 1980 von Karajan recording with Karin Ott as Die K\;onigin der Nacht. I still think her Racheg\:otter is definitive — you can absolutely imagine her going around the bend, over the edge, and heading off into Bush Country as she sings it.
Alas, I have kids in bed, so I don’t get to do the whole Memorex commercial — but the Wagner…hell, yeah!
eileen from OH
I also loved the movie, but with all the hype about everyone else in the movie (who were, granted, wonderful) it’s easy to overlook the little actress who played Olive. After a steady diet of Dakota Fanning and Dakota Wannabees, it was wonderful to see a child playing a child. The kid was flawless.
steve
For the other end of Arkin’s acting spectrum, see Wait Until Dark (1967) in which he play a blood-freezing, psychopathic killer. His first scene will haunt you.
Justin
It’s a fantastic film. Best film of the year. But it won’t win Best Picture. That will go to some lame 3 hour film with actors who whisper through the entire movie.
Zifnab
She was definitely one of the better child actors I’ve seen in a while. I’m a big Steve Carrel fan, which is about the only thing that got me into the movie theater, but it was totally worth the $8. I went to see it with a bunch of college guys and we all enjoyed it.
I appreciate the rather slow, meloncoly start that went rather smoothly into the more improbably hijinks. Whoever wrote that screenplay knew what he was doing.
p.lukasiak
I happened to get both Little Miss Sunshine and Thank You For Smoking from netflix yesterday, and watched them both last night.
LMS was a really good movie — not great, because the ending was way too long (in a film that was perfectly paced otherwise), and I have another problem with the ending, but can’t discuss it without doing a “spoiler”.
Thank You For Smoking, on the other hand, is a truly great film….. brilliantly written, acted, directed, and edited. Plus, it has another great “kid” performance in it.
mrmobi
p.lukasiak
I loved Little Miss Sunshine, especially the wonderful child actress. It’s great how the script works against your expectations of a comedy in the beginning. Arkin is a national treature.
But I couldn’t agree more about Thank You For Smoking. Just a terrific picture, really well done.
Darrell
Good observation. I agree completely, and I’ve never heard anyone else come out and say it before.. although I’ll bet we’re not the only ones to think it. If you watch the extra material and interviews that come with the “Man on Fire” DVD, she pushes it too far with trying to be an adult, acting as if she was the big star rather than Denzel and trying to get others to suck up to her.. it was a bit repulsive really. I thought her role in MOF was ok, but nothing out of the ordinary for a decent child actor. Kind of like a child trying too hard to act like an adult actor.
I do have to say though, that after watching DF in “Hide and seek”, I changed my mind on her acting abilities.. She played a helluva role, and convinced me that she truly is an extraordinarily gifted child actor. Rent the movie if you haven’t already seen it. It’s a good thriller, and stars Robert DeNiro. But even though DF can walk the walk as a child actor, she’s still a kid pretending too much to be like an adult.
and yeah, absolutely the fact that Olive was just being herself, a kid, is what made her character so loveable in LMS.
mrmobi
Demi, have you seen the film “Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould”? It’s like a peek into the greatest Canadian musicians’ mind, and it is just as strange as can be, and full of his magnificent playing. Not a Christmas movie, but really worth watching.
Darrell:
I also thought the ending of Little Miss Sunshine was too long. But I still think you’re a Nazi. Sorry!
Happy New Year, all!
mrmobi
Alan Arkin is a national treasure, not a national treature.
mrmobi
ThymeZone, Empire Falls was really good. Paul Newman is in that national treasure category too, as far as I’m concerned. I just loved his Irish gangster in Road to Perdition.
Zifnab
Aaron Eckhart is so evil! I freak’n loved that movie. I mean, you just don’t know who the hell to root for by the end of it all. And Rob Lowe as the Hollywood guy with the Japanese fetish was awesome.
Ted
My prediction: this thread will reach beyond 300 posts. Over one third of them will be by Darrell alone..
Krista
I wish there was something decent playing in the theatres, though. It’s always nice to go see a movie, this time of year, but right now, nothing is really jumping up and biting me in the butt.
ThymeZone
Definitely. I was a fan from The Hustler, which is still one of my 25 favorites of all time. My wife will sit and watch a bottle of salad dressing if it has his picture on it.
For that reason, I have to keep her away from the refrigerator ……
ThymeZone
Always the tease.
Darrell
“What we got here is a failure to communicate“
ThymeZone
Your irony of the day?
mrmobi
My personal favorite Newman film is “Hombre,” which is adapted from the Elmore Leonard novel. It’s looking a bit dated now, but Newman gives an under-stated performance which pretty much creates the anti-hero category in modern film.
Richard Boone, playing the delightfully horrible Cicero Grimes, asks Newman what he thinks hell is going to look like, just before the climactic gunfight. Newman responds, “We all die, it’s just a matter of when.”
Word.
Punchy
I bet they had a field day reviewing the South Park movie.
Punchy
Can we all agree to PLEASE not give away endings to movies? Can one imagine how diff “The Usual Suspects” (or “The Others”) would be to watch if one knew what the ending involved?
Moocho thankso.
demimondian
Well, TZ, since the “failure to communicate” line is delivered by the Carroll O’Connor character *to* the Newman character, I’d say it was Darrell’s bait line of the day — and it seems to have hooked at least one fish. :)
demimondian
Oh, and mrmobi, no, I haven’t seen the film. I’ll need to go find it — after all, strange as it may be, it can’t be as strange as its subject.
ThymeZone
I’d say it was Darrell’s unintentional straight line, and my response wins the round.
Point to me. As usual.
ThymeZone
Especially Gone With the Wind. And Titanic. How did those turn out? See the movies.
As for Usual Suspects, except for the use of certain props at the end, it was pretty easy to predict.
demimondian
Hmm. Good point, TZ — what we have here is, indeed, a failure to communicate.
Remember that Luke is an anti-hero, though…
demimondian
None of the spoilers bother me, as long as nobody gives away the ending of _My Dinner with Andre_.
ThymeZone
Color me weird, but that’s another of my favorite films.
Zifnab
Oh, you mean when they all get kidnapped by space aliens? Oops.
But here, I’ll ruin the end of Signs for anyone who hasn’t seen it and save them some grief. The aliens aren’t aliens, they’re just manifestations of how much M. Night Shyamalan sucks at writing a plot.
ThymeZone
Did you know that if Shyamalan ate a Ding Dong it would be Shyamalan’s Ding Dong?
ThymeZone
Too lazy to write my own material, like Darrell I go out and cut and paste from a website.
Please submit your 200-words-or-less themes on these questions. Al Maviva is allowed 10,000 words.
Pooh
I call BS.
Pooh
John, I see your point about being nice, given that this is a movie thread, but someone who writes
And it’s par for the course, really has no basis for complaining about people being uncivil to him.
To paraphrase The Dude, I’m not saying he’s wrong, I’m just saying he’s an asshole. And you know it.
(Alternatively, unless you are going to call him on the above or stuff like it, it’s pretty lame to call out ppG and Tsulagi here. Just saying.)
mrmobi
Thanks a bunch, TZ! Cream of Broccoli soup all over my shirt.
over it
Count amongst those who laughed the whole way through Little Miss Sunshine. It was all the better since I had NO CLUE what the movie was about. Definitely one of my faves of the year (or even of the past couple of years!).
I am looking forward to Pan’s Labyrinth. Hopefully some artsy local theater will have it on the big screen….if not, I guess I will have to ‘borrow it’ from the internets. One way or the other I will be seeing it soon. ;)
I am also interested in seeing Chidren of Men….will be plonking down a few bills to see it on the big screen as well.
Punchy
I call shenanigans. There’s NO WAY you could have predicted Spacey was Kaiser Cantspellit. Not until his coffee cup breaks at the end of the interview is there any indication that the movie’s characters aren’t what they’ve been portrayed as…
ThymeZone
Sure did, about a half hour before the end. My spouse is a witness. She had already seen the movie, and sat poker faced as I made my prediction.
It really wasn’t that hard. It was clear by that time that the whole story was a setup, and that the Spacey character was by far the most likely “suspect.”
I rate the ploy on about the same scale as the Marlene Dietrich thing in “Witness for the Prosecution.”
Mildly entertaining, 6.5 on the 10 scale. No biggie.
ThymeZone
Sure did, about a half hour before the end. My spouse is a witness. She had already seen the movie, and sat poker faced as I made my prediction.
It really wasn’t that hard. It was clear by that time that the whole story was a setup, and that the Spacey character was by far the most likely “suspect.”
I rate the ploy on about the same scale as the Marlene Dietrich thing in “Witness for the Prosecution.”
Mildly entertaining, 6.5 on the 10 scale. No biggie.
not the senator
Watched ‘Thank You For Smoking’ over the weekend and don’t have even close to the same opinion. If you think John Stossel is insightful, then this is a great flick. Glenn Reynolds idea of “heh, indeed!” I gave it a Netflix rating of 2 stars.
LMS was the best comedy of the year. Well written and showing the good human side of a very dysfunctional family. On the other hand, I enjoyed parts of ‘Borat’ but it was largely mean-spirited. I felt like I do after watching some of the ‘Jackass’ bits, you can’t help laughing but is this really good for society? I’d much rather hang out with the LMS crowd.
Someone
Little Miss Sunshine sucked out loud. It took a cliched but somewhat realistic family road trip comedy and halfway though grafted a subplot onto it that came right of Weekend at Bernie’s.
SPOILERS! There was not in the situation portrayed in this film ANY reason to steal the body from the hospital other than to create a stupid excuse for stupid slapstick. Beyond the taint of that stupid scene, the idea that the family would continue to drive 300 miles in summer heat with a dead body in the back of a VW Microbus DIRECTLY ABOVE THE ENGINE, and not one of them would comment on the smell (or oozing fluids, etc) is just fucking stupid. I mean shit, I’ll excuse some plot holes, but for a comedy that professes to possess some insight to turn into such a stupid collection of stunts disconnected from anything resembling reality is just inexcusable.
That, and the bit with the cop and the porn was like right out of Porkys or something. Stupid. Were it not for Arkin and Carell, that movie would’ve been completely unwatchable.
Pooh
Ok, I’ll buy it at that point, as there were plenty of clues as to Spacey’s just not rightness at that point (I remember “Kobayashi” being one of the things which unsettled me, and in retrospect I realized should have been a tip off. I thought you were claiming first ten minutes. (Unlike, say “M. Night Shymalan’s Ding Dong’s 6th Sense”, which I got immediately)
ThymeZone
Oh heck no. Sometime in the -20, -30 min range.
Process of elimination by then. No other answer made sense. I was kind of hoping for a setup – bada bing thing, and that’s what I got.
The movie had been hyped to me as the Greatest Movie Ever by a fanatical Spacey fan (now the mother of the dear Maci) and so I was a little on edge about his presence in the story anyway. For Maci’s mom, any movie he was in was the Greatest Movie Ever when she was a teenager.
Prior to that, it was Any Movie With Tom Cruise.
One has to keep up with the household culture, you see.
Darrell
I had forgotten about that part. You’re right.. it really was like some stupid sh*t out of Porky’s.
It was an ok movie, definitely watcheable.. but I have no idea why so many here are raving that it was sooo fantastic.
Zifnab
Someone needs to lighten up.
gus
demimondian, I believe that the “failure to communicate” line was delivered by Strother Martin’s character. Someone, I agree to some extent. My wife and I saw the movie last night, and agreed that the movie went south when they took the body from the hospital. And the Allan Arkin character was a stock movie character, as was the son. I’ve seen both characters done the same way a million times. All in all, a pleasant, highly overrated movie. I agree that the little girl was quite good, not to mention cute as a button.
gus
Oh, and the dance scene at the end? Basically the same scene as in “About a Boy” when the Hugh Grant character joins the kid on the stage to sing. “Little Miss Sunshine” has been given way too much credit for originality. There isn’t much of it there.
demimondian
gus: I double checked, and you are correct. It is the captain character, not the warden.
I was confusing the “I hope we ain’t gonna have trouble with you” scene with the later scene when Luke has escaped for the first time.
Krista
That does kind of bug me when a perfectly excellent movie cops out with a singing/dancing scene to wrap things up. Why don’t they just put a scrolling neon message across the screen saying, “Pack up your shit, kids! The movie’s over!”
Maybe it’s just me, but it always seems like being rudely shaken awake at the end of what was a pleasant dream.
ImJohnGalt
I enjoyed LMS quite a bit, but I’ll have to [gasp!] agree with Darrell that the dance scene went on a bit too long.
I really liked the son, though.
Anderson
I’ll have to [gasp!] agree with Darrell that the dance scene went on a bit too long.
Maybe … but watching the shock set in, and wondering just how nasty the routine would get, was pretty fun.
Pooh
And, as I said upthread, biker dude makes the scene at the end…
Fruitbat
Okay, considering all the expressions of “saw it coming” during movies that are known for their surprise twists, perhaps we could have an accounting of those movies that DID actually surprise people when their twist was revealed? Especially those in the pre-Shyamalamadingdong era when movies didn’t have to have twist endings to attract a crowd. And hopefully we can do this without revealing what the twist was.
In my case, I was slackjawed by the reveal in “Psycho,” (yes, I somehow managed to avoid being told the killer before seeing it), but I pegged the secret in “The Crying Game” about twenty minutes before it was exposed.
(And if we can cross over to television, I’m sure NOBODY saw the last scene of the series “St. Elsewhere” coming.)
Fledermaus
Zing! God I can’t stand Shyamalan and his predictable plots the only one of his movies I’ve seen in its entirety was The Village and even I (and I’m not that good at predicting plots) guessed the twist about 20 minutes in.
I fawking hate that guy.
Caleb
I couldn’t remember where I read this (short) review, but it was in the back of my head as I rented it a week or so ago. Also, a coworker suggested it to me, saying she, also, laughed practically throughout the entire movie.
I don’t get it. yea, it had some funny moments, but I really didn’t have one laugh-out-loud moment. I thought it was actually a pretty depressing movie. I kept waiting to really laugh as much as I was told I would, and just didn’t.
This isn’t to say it wasn’t a good movie. I liked it, but, just don’t see the over the top laughter some experienced in this movie.
It is just one of those movies I guess I missed the bus on.
Jon Benet
I still haven’t figured out why the other contestants were ticked off at the Superfreak performance. It’s not like any of them would be smart enough to figure out they were being mocked, at least not as quickly as they did. So they were presumably taking the act at face value. Compared to some of the other contestants it really wasn’t much different.
Yes, I’m one of those people who say “and then what happened?” after the punchline of a joke. How did you know?
Tom
“As for Little Miss Sunshine, it was cute, but I didn’t think it was as great as some do. Did anything raise it above “cute”? What did I miss? Or was cute enough?”
Completely agree. Now, I just recently saw it, so my opinion may have been skewed by all the positive things I heard about it, but I’d give it 2-1/2 stars… maybe 3. It did it’s job, but there was nothing surprising about the film. I didn’t think it was very “deep.” No insights that made me think. Do I really need to be reminded that life is too short to get hung up on problems that everyday life throws at us? Maybe. And I appreciate it. But nothing new, nothing exciting.
“I still haven’t figured out why the other contestants were ticked off at the Superfreak performance.”
I hate when films create over-the-top, cartoonish “mean” characters. I didn’t buy for a moment that the woman wouldn’t allow them to sign up when they got to the contest. That person doesn’t exist.