Looks good. Anyone seen it yet?
heartwarming, refreshing, funny and harmless. My greatest surprise was that for once, the theatrical trailers only gave away the first five minutes of the movie… the next hour and a half was unexplored territory, and all the more enjoyable for it.
I saw it this past weekend… very funny movie. Thumbs up.
Owen Gleiberman’s been getting a lot of shit for his review, but I agree with him about 95%. I think I laughed more than OG, but the movie is as artificial as he says. Not a bad movie, but not worthy of the accolades it’s received.
Wes Anderson’s movies are intentionally artificial, aren’t they?
Yes.
He takes the quirky independent movie schema to its most extreme form so that you don’t have to worry about completely artificial pathos.
I don’t know if that’s what he’d call it; (no tone intended, I really don’t know). I’d call it “heightened,” bordering on “absurdist.” Bottom line, he’s usually more clever and entertaining than what I saw in Little Miss Sunshine (Wes Anderson haters, start your engines…).
In addition to artificial, LMS was superficial. Despite the best efforts of the cast, there wasn’t much going on below the surface. Still, it had some great bits.
I thought the movie was hilarious. Really didn’t expect it to be as funny as it was. But then again, it’s a Steve Carell movie, and I’ve always been pleasantly surprised by his endeavors. Plus, if you have a darker sense of humor (like, say, you think a corpse stuffed in a trunk and covered with gay porn is funny), then this movie will appeal to that. It’s not “Citizen Kane”, but I’d say “Little Miss Sunshine” is worth at least a matinee showing.
This was by far the best movie I’ve seen all year. Awesome awesome stuff. “Artificial” is what you call movies like “Invincible” or whatever. This movie was a riot and I laughed so hard I gave myself a headache.
so, is this a royal tenenbaums/rushmore kind of funny? or a 40-year-old virgin kind of funny?
I would say the former.
Definitely the former.
Alan Arkin is the best part.
“A lot of women.”
Same here, best new release I’ve seen all year. It had its flaws, but they did not distract me.
I left the theater kind of wanting to bring my kid (10) to it later because she’s similar in certain ways to the central character and there were a lot of great themes. But the Alan Arkin character, god bless 'im, prevented me. Well, that and the porn, of course.
Two things about this movie that rubbed me the wrong way:
- Body in the trunk
- Dance party
Two things that rubbed me the right way:
- Ice cream
- Each little moment of heartbreak
Cute movie. I’d show it to my grandmom.
I caught this movie last week with my parents, and all three of us loved it.
From the trailer, I thought it would be a quirky-to-a-fault indie movie that invited us to laugh at its stereotypes, but it turned out much better. I thought the characters were flawed but human. Maybe it’s because I watched it with my folks, but I liked the “importance of family” theme – it didn’t seem too mawkish to me.
And (spoilers ahead!) I somewhat disagree with the Owen Gleiberman review linked above. I thought Olive’s dance (while inappropriate for her age) was celebrating the enthusiasm of sleaze and contrasted with the other contestants to highlight how crassly, artificially sexual they were. And of course it was an awesome “fuck you” from beyond the grave from the grandpa. Every previous Alan Arkin role is going to seem retroactively funnier after seeing his exuberantly filthy old man here.
And yeah, parts of the movie were contrived, but not so much as to bother me.
Spoilers, probably:
I saw this last Friday. Thought it was hilarious, particularly the end, where it’s revealed what Olive’s routine is. Yeah, it’s a bit like shooting fish in a barrel, but it’s still a good commentary on the whole beauty pageant scene and the inherent objectification of young girls as sexual objects.
I thought the characters were pretty sympathetic, even Greg Kinnear’s; he plainly sucks as a motivational speaker and just comes across as a bit of a prick but you can’t help feeling sorry for him when things don’t go his way.
The grandfather could have been a one-dimensional dirty old man, but he has some tender moments with both Olive and his son and Dwayne is likeable even though he doesn’t say much for most of the film.
The best character was probably Steve Carell’s Frank who manages to convey suffering, whilst still seeming alternately bemused and amused at the antics of his family. Toni Collette didn’t really get much to do, which is a shame.
I was pleasantly surprised that my wife enjoyed this - indie comedy isn’t generally her thing, so it must have been doing something right.
I saw it this weekend as well, and it was surprisingly excellent. Judging from the previews, it seemed like it would have that sort of insanely dry and twisted humor like Royal Tennenbaums and the like, but it was quite different. It actually turned out to be one of the more genuine comedies I’ve seen in a while.