Posted on 09/03/2006 8:38:11 AM PDT by pabianice
Hollywood is all abuzz about “Little Miss Sunshine,” a deftly presented piece of porn pretending to be a “heart-warming Oscar contender.” The bubbly adjectives simply swirl about this recent release: “brilliant, deftly drawn, heartwarming, raucous, superb, human, engrossing, fun, ingenious, brilliantly hysterical, warm, moving, endearing,” and more. The truth is far less sunny. “Little Miss Sunshine” is a $10 million kiddie porn movie that displays just how rotten Hollywood has become and just how far its powerbrokers have moved from America. That it was the hit of the Sundance Festival was pre-ordained.
It’s hard to know where to begin in talking about this movie and what it tells us about the current business of making movies. The cast is, to be fair, very good, the direction competent, the scene dressing excellent. But the movie itself is tasteless and basically disgraceful, an updated version of “All in the Family,” in which evil, stupid Red America is brought up short by savvy, hip Blue America. Alan Arkin plays grandpa, an aging bum who snorts heroin (yuk, yuk) and was expelled from his nursing home because he is a dangerous, in-your-face loser who counsels others to live irresponsibly. One of his character’s two sons has just tried to kill himself because he was jilted by his gay lover (audience eyes tear up because it’s so, you know, sensitive and, you know, PC). The other son is a financially failed, unsuccessful huckster of a step program for self-improvement who is taken advantage of by Evil Big Business. The teenage grandson is apparently a lunatic who is determined to get into the Air Force Academy and who has taken a vow of silence until he is accepted (that there is a huge poster of an F-18 – a Navy airplane – on his bedroom wall clearly escaped the schmucks who produced this film). We never learn how he plans to do well in high school while refusing to speak. In one violent sequence we learn what potential US military officers are really like when this clueless, friendless loner goes berserk. Nice touch, Hollywood.
And then there is the grand daughter, Olive, a perky seven-year-old who becomes the winner of a local talent contest when the winner is disqualified for what sounds like doping (although we aren’t sure). Olive has a routine of which we remain uninformed until the final sequence. During the 800-mile cross-country drive in a rolling deathtrap of a VW minibus (so, so, 60s! you know), grandpa dies of a heroin overdose while baby-sitting Olive (Manson family values are on display everywhere in this film), so the family steals his body from the hospital, wraps him in a sheet, and stuffs him in the back of the bus. This sequence simply sparkles with the kind of wit for which Hollywood has become so justifiably famous and was getting old when it was done in “National Lampoon’s Vacation” thirty years ago. Of course, the bus is stopped by a cop on the road, but no problem. The cop is, as are all cops, you know, a leering, loathsome policeman who, upon finding a stash of porn magazines, trades some comments with dad that are so uncomfortable for the audience as to make grandpa’s death look like an episode of “Teletubbies.”
Whatever else it may be about, I know it's in part about kiddie beauty pageants, and those creep me out, in any context. Even if they're making fun of them, I don't want to see anything having to do that sick, freakish phenomena.
mmm. get your Kool Aid and movie reviews here!
not much different than some of the stuff world nut daily publishes, or the lame conservative attacks on "American Beauty" written by people who had OBVIOUSLY not seen the movie. (please read for comprehension there)
People like this don't help. It just gives left wing a-holes and talking heads more examples of "crazy right wingers."
Educate yourself about the topic before you start mouthing off about stuff... You still have no idea what the movie is about and yet you hide behind one part of a movie that isn't even the focal point...
Just read the review. Objections?
What are you talking about?
You seem to imply the review differing from the movie. How?
Glad Dr Seuss wasn't alive to have to see what Hollywood did to that and "The Cat In the Hat."
In its entirety...
You advocate the movie on what merits?
You are way late to thread... go back and read mine and others posts and get caught up... You'll get clued in real quick... it's a good film, funny and well written.. end of story...
I expected more from you.
I was making a joke...
Nope, all I had to do was read verbatim. :)
You've had your tail twisted ever since you found out how pro-life I am on an abortion discussion thread and that tweaked your defense of abortion on demand. That you can now either ignore what was the exchange prior to your chiming in to castigate in support of your liberal world view --since not a single post was addressed to you in said exchange-- or you just cannot help the kind of trends-driven soul you're becoming with your world-view. Have a nice day ...
Mike Medved loved it - and he's hardly a lefty porn lover.
just go to moviespoiler.com to find out what the story is for real.
What porn...?
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