Little Miss Sunshine
Little Miss Sunshine is the story of the Hoovers, a fictional dysfunctional family from Albuquerque, New Mexico. The characters are introduced in the opening sequences: Sheryl Hoover (Toni Collette), a stressed and over-worked mother of two, picks up her brother Frank (Steve Carell) at a hospital after the depressed, gay Proust scholar has recovered from a failed suicide attempt. Richard Hoover (Greg Kinnear) is a manic go-getter striving to sell his motivational nine-step technique to becoming a winner. Dwayne (Paul Dano), is an angst-ridden, avowedly mute, Nietzsche-reading teenager who has dedicated his life to joining the US Air Force Academy in order to become a test pilot. Richard’s father, Edwin (Alan Arkin), recently evicted from a retirement home for snorting heroin, is shown to have a strong bond with his seven-year-old granddaughter Olive (Abigail Breslin), and coaches her to perform in a child beauty pageant.
After an expository dinner sequence, Olive learns she has qualified for the “Little Miss Sunshine” beauty pageant that is being held in Redondo Beach, California in two days. Olive is asked to be in Little Miss Sunshine after placing second in another beauty pageant. As soon as Olive hears the news she gets up from the table and starts screaming with joy, hurrying down stairs to keep practicing her routine that her grandpa has been teaching her. While Olive is partying downstairs her parents are forced to plan how they are going to get there. Since their relatives are out of town and the family cannot afford other alternatives, the family realizes they must pack all six family members into their yellow Volkswagen Type 2 mini-bus for a two-day road trip to California.
The family’s tensions play out on the highway and at stops along the way, amidst the aging VW van’s mechanical problems. The characters suffer setbacks: Richard’s hopes for his motivational technique business sputter out; Frank encounters his ex-boyfriend who is now dating Frank’s scholarly rival; Grandpa dies from a heroin overdose during the family’s overnight stay at a motel; Dwayne discovers that he is color-blind, which means he cannot become a pilot (this causes him to speak his first line of the movie – ‘fuck’); and Sheryl’s obsessive manner impels her to attempt to keep everyone, including herself, calm and sane. Amidst all this, the family races to get to the pageant on time, traveling in the VW van with a broken clutch (requiring them to push-start it after every stop) and a faulty horn that won’t stop honking on its own.
The finale takes place at the pageant, in which 6- to 7-year-old girls model swimsuits and evening wear and perform elaborate dance numbers. Olive is out-classed by the other girls’ emulation of Barbie dolls, but the family reluctantly allows her to continue the competition and pursue her dream. In the talent portion, Olive scandalizes and horrifies the audience and pageant judges with a striptease-style burlesque performance (to the tune of Rick James’ “Super Freak”), taught to her by Grandpa, which she performs unaware of its risque nature. When her family rises to defend her from the pageant organizers and shield her from the humiliation of being removed from the stage, the ensuing chaos brings the dysfunctional family together in a shining moment of triumph over all of the many obstacles that littered their collective journey spanning time and interstate highways. By dancing on stage together they find what is really important in life: each other.
To placate the irate pageant organizers, the family gladly agrees to their demand that Olive never ever participate in another beauty pageant in the state of California. They return to their van, push-start it, jump one by one into the side door, smash through the car park gate and head home smiling.
