LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE - 88

Amazon.com Pile together a blue-ribbon cast, a screenplay high in quirkiness, and the Sundance stamp of approval, and you've got yourself a crossover indie hit. That formula worked for Little Miss Sunshine, a frequently hilarious study of family dysfunction. Meet the Hoovers, an Albuquerque clan riddled with depression, hostility, and the tattered remnants of the American Dream; despite their flakiness, they manage to pile into a VW van for a weekend trek to L.A. in order to get moppet daughter Olive (Abigail Breslin) into the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant. Much of the pleasure of this journey comes from watching some skillful comic actors doing their thing: Greg Kinnear and Toni Collette as the parents (he's hoping to become a self-help authority), Alan Arkin as a grandfather all too willing to give uproariously inappropriate advice to a sullen teenage grandson (Paul Dano), and a subdued Steve Carell as a jilted gay professor on the verge of suicide. The film is a crowd-pleaser, and if anything is a little too eager to bend itself in the direction of quirk-loving Sundance audiences; it can feel forced. But the breezy momentum and the ingenious actors help push the material over any bumps in the road.-- Robert Horton Beyond Little Miss Sunshine Stills from Little Miss Sunshine Product Description The story begins when young Olive is given a shot the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant, and manages to coerce her family into driving west in their worn-down VW van. Olive's father Richard heads up the trip, while mother Sheryl, brother Dwayne, uncle Frank and grandfather come along for the ride. Director Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris Star Toni Collette, Steven Carell, Greg Kinnear Special Features: Dual Side, Commentary, Deleted Scenes, Music Videos 101 Minutes. Set Contains: Two separate commentary tracks give directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris plenty of opportunities to describe how they shot the VW bus scenes and how Alan Arkin improvised a nose-blowing during the early dinner-table sequence. One breezy track has the directors only; another has them joined by screenwriter Michael Arndt. A music video, DeVotchKa's "Till the End of Time," is a standard cut-and-paste with clips from the movie. Amongst these rather slim pickings, the biggest draw for bonus-features mavens is a chance to look at alternate endings, narrated by the co-directors. Dayton and Faris frankly describe different stabs at getting an ending right: the first concept was deemed too sentimental, and subsequent variations on a different idea didn't hit quite the right note. Four (very brief) alternate endings are here, and without a doubt the filmmakers were correct in ultimately shooting--at a date just before the film's premiere--an entirely new finale. --Robert Horton
ASIN: B000K7VHQE
VSKU: 4EKGRJ006A7Y_ns
Condition: Good
Binding: DVD