James Rocchi At The Movies

CBS 5's James Rocchi On 'Little Miss Sunshine'

(CBS 5) Rating: Three out of Four Stars

We've all seen those 'Sucessories' posters in co-worker's cubes, or motivational needlepoint pillows in a friend's home. Now and then, the sentiments expressed -- Never Quit, Keep the Faith, Dare to be Great -- speak to us and warm our hearts.

 CBS 5 Entertainment

But most of the time, they want to make us scream "Life isn't like that!" and deface the object in question. The Hoovers probably have those posters -- Richard (Greg Kinnear), the father of the family, is a motivational speaker whose own career could use some motivation. His long-suffering wife Sheryl (Toni Colette) is beginning to change her suffering in silence to the audible kind. Grandad (Alan Arkin) is a porn-obsessed heroin addict. The oldest son, Dwayne (Paul Dano), is trying to get out of the family and into the Air Force as soon as possible, while Uncle Frank (Steve Carell) is an unhappy academic who just split from his longtime lover.

And finally, there is Olive (Abigail Breslin), whose dream of entering the Little Miss Sunshine pageant is bringing her family together, whether they want that or not. The Hoovers are traveling cross-country to the pageant -- with Richard making side-trips to try and give his business a shot in the arm -- in the family's broken-down VW van, which everyone has to get out and push to start.

It's a pretty transparent metaphor from the writing-directing team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Ferris -- if we don't all push together, we're not going anywhere -- but it's an amusing one, and Little Miss Sunshine is an amusing film. Little Miss was picked up for distribution at Sundance after a long, arduous slog to the silver screen, and it's easy to see both why it was purchased and why it took so long to happen. Even by the standards of an ensemble comedy, no single character stands out enough for us to latch on to any one of them for long, and Dayton and Ferris' directorial style brings things to a simmer and leaves them there; the comedy never quite boils over.

But there are nice moments in Little Miss Sunshine; Arkin is, as ever, an unrepentant scene-stealer and a magnetic presence; Kinnear and Colette both display solid, slow-burn comedy chops and Carell actually acts -- you believe in Frank as a character, which can't be said of any of Carell's other loopy, goofy comedy roles. And the film's climax -- as the Hoovers race to get Olive to the pageant on time without thinking things through to their logical conclusion -- is a nicely-tuned bit of comedy that manages to feel both funny and creepy in a near-perfect balance. Little Miss Sunshine isn't dazzling, but it's a shaft of light in what's been a dreary summer for comedies.

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