Little Miss Sunshine is more than a typical American road trip movie—it is a film about family, conformity, and redemption. It exposes a world that has been compartmentalized ad nauseum: everything from a career, to a retirement home, to hospital forms, are negatively presented as oversimplified and superficial regarding people’s real needs. There are actually, very few things in the film that aren’t presented in this light. As the story unfolds, the film implicitly “preaches” that sometimes following conventions only limits or hurts us. But, redemption can occur by being true to oneself.
The opening montage presents Little Miss Sunshine’s characters, the Hoover family, one at a time. Olive (Abigail Breslin) is a young, high-spirited, aspiring pageant winner. Her father, Richard (Greg Kinnear), is a failing motivational speaker. He is awkward, out-of-touch, and obsessive. Ironically, he militantly preaches success even though he never sees any in the film. Olive’s mother Sheryl (Toni Collete) is working hard to feed and hold the family together, as they all flounder.
Grandpa (Alan Arkin), Olive’s coach, has spent days training his granddaughter for the Little Miss Sunshine Pageant. He lives with his son’s family after having been booted from his retirement home for philandering and drug use: to him, life is to be enjoyed. Though he is obviously affected by the failures of his own life, he is not defeated. He avoids pessimism and optimism, settling somewhere in the middle as a realist.
Uncle Frank (Steve Carell), Sheryl’s brother, is the Number Two Marcel Proust scholar in the world. He enters the Hoover’s home after a botched suicide attempt from a broken relationship. His new temporary “roomie” is Olive’s teenage brother Dwayne (Paul Dano). Dwayne has taken a vow of silence while training to get into flight school. A large poster of Nietzsche hangs from the wall of his bedroom, which his uncle Frank finds pretty amusing.
The montage cleverly juxtaposes Olive’s youthful naiveté with Uncle Frank’s melancholy heartache. In the first several minutes of the film we are presented with Little Miss Sunshine’s main problem: how do we go through life, consistently failing at everything, and not end up as broken losers? This problem is demonstrated in the most awkward and excruciating of ways throughout the film as each character encounters defeat, failure, and disappointment. One by one, each character loses.
Although only alive for part of the film (not unlike Jesus in the New Testament), Grandpa holds an integral role in the film: as a nonconforming, vulgar, but redemptive Christ figure in the film. Although Grandpa does not offer himself as a sacrificial lamb in any way, the theme of redemption is introduced and maintained around his character. Even though he does not quite understand everything, he is accepting and non-judgmental. He quietly accepts Frank’s sexual orientation and his failed attempt at suicide for what they are. He passes no judging remarks—unlike Richard, his son—he only remains quiet. One initially finds him oblivious to the happenings around him, although it’s later revealed that he’s known what’s been happening all along.
As the family travels to Redondo Beach in a vintage VW van, Grandpa’s eccentricities and his outlook on life are revealed. He spouts unconventional love advice to his grandson, gets Frank to buy him pornography, and advocates snorting heroin in old age—he’s not quite the grandpa who tells lame jokes at Christmas dinner. But ironically, Grandpa is the ideal example in the story; he doesn't want to corrupt his family, he wants to emancipate and support them. Again, Grandpa is the one who coaches Olive in her dream to be a beauty queen. When Richard fails to get a book deal, Grandpa is the one to offer sincere comfort and sympathy to his son. He is true to himself and loves in the way he can.
Part way through the road trip, the family is nearing a motel when Olive poses questions about heaven: is there such a place? This scene sizzles out cutely and we think nothing about it for the time being. But, as we later see, this scene is far more significant than its cuteness. The very motel the family stays at ends up being Grandpa’s last, as he overdoses on heroin and dies. Since the family is trying to meet a deadline, they have no time to bury Grandpa right away: they have to lug his body along with them. Comically, they steal Grandpa’s corpse (which is wrapped in white) from the hospital and take him along until they have time to properly address the issue of his burial. When the family arrives at the pageant location Richard arranges for his father to be picked up by a funeral home.
Olive’s pageant performance is the movie’s climax. The family is worn-out and downtrodden, but they are there to support Olive. Although one expects to see her succeed and “save the day,” the performance is a train wreck (her pseudo-striptease and awkward pelvic thrusts are not quite crowd-pleasers). The audience begins to heckle her and the pageant organizers try and stop her halfway through her performance, but the family won’t have it. In these triumphal moments the film redefines what a winner really is. Starting significantly with Richard (who has been constantly pushing everyone to be “winners”), one-by-one the family jumps on stage to dance with Olive. They stop dwelling on their own failures; each individual is renewed; the family is redeemed. Yes, Olive failed at the pageant, but to her family and herself, she is a big winner.
Winners are not those who follow all the conventions and receive the prizes: winners are true to themselves. This epiphany is highlighted when the family returns to the van and they all open the trunk and look in—Grandpa is gone. The shot resonates of Peter and John as they peer into Jesus’ empty tomb, stunned that the slain Christ no longer rests there. The shot is unmistakable: the sunlight peers in, the white shroud remains, all are silent, even, reverent. Grandpa’s empty tomb recalls the message of Redemption traditionally associated with Jesus’ resurrection. The family has been redeemed through this pageant experience.
Little Miss Sunshine is a refreshing surprise and a much-needed standard for independent films today. Every time a cliché rears its ugly head, it is split into pieces by postmodern concepts of human complexity and individualism. The directors, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, obviously understand the place of subtle and tasteful association, which can say far more than words. They also seem to appreciate what strong moral implications film can have. Of course, as in many great films, there are many other readings to be produced. But in this case, we perceive a redefinition of what a winner is, and that redemption can occur when we decide that we don’t need to conform to be winners, and, in the end, we can find support in our families.
