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.”
How disgusting! But thanks for the heads-up. This is one film that my family and I shall avoid like the Plague!
Oh. Oh! Don't forget Billy Crystal on that list.
Twelve little girls, ages 6-13, are competing for Little Miss Sunshine. We are then assaulted to fifteen minutes of little girls, dressed and made-up like crack whores, dancing and flirting with the adult judges while the adult audience goes wild with approval. This is a truly horrifying sequence and, I believe, the intended “best part” of the movie – sexualizing little girls for adult prurience.
The little girls themselves – obviously all actors in this movie – seem confused about what they are supposed to be doing and affect a sort of frozen, death-grimace of a smile in their roles. I hope this is what they were directed to do and not how they really felt during the filming. And finally. It’s Olive’s turn. Her family has a last-minute bit of doubt and tells her that she doesn’t have to perform against such stiff competition if she chooses, but she continues with her act “for grandpa” and to show her dad that “losers never try.” And then we see it. To the musical number “Super Freak” little Olive performs the number dear old grand dad taught her -- a highly-suggestive striptease and dance./b>
Well! This simply scandalizes the rest of the pageant and there ensues a painfully dishonest commotion, to which Olive’s family responds by jumping up on the stage and joining in the pornographic jerking and bumping and grinding. Take that, you Bush voters!
The list is pretty long, but I abbreviated it because somebody will undoubtedly like one of the actors, or just one performance, and complain.
But I would list: Alan Arkin, Albert Brooks, Billy Crystal, Walter Matthau, Jack Lemmon, Steve Guttenburg, Robin Williams, and Jonathan Winters.
sounds likee Book of Daniel.
The media, such as it is, is a involved in the distribution of product. Some of that product I choose to consume and much of that product I pass on. I have no interest in expending the energy required to smash...
Are you so defensive because you make your living in the movie industry?
Even the spoiler description is DULL DULLL DULLL
http://www.themoviespoiler.com/Spoilers/littlemisssunshine.html
I have no memory of that conversation; I was replying to your post here. I was on topic; you seem to be all over the place in your response. You have a nice day too and try to calm down.
I also don't recall the "defense", can you show me the posts in question since you remember it so clearly?
Don't you see? Don't you get it? Little Miss Sunshine spells the end for civilization as we know it! With the release of this movie into theaters around the country, nothing will ever be the same! Little Miss Sunshine heralds in a new and frightening age! Cats sleeping with dogs, children standing stock still and staring into space with blank eyes, adults too horrified to scream! The world has not seen the power such a thing as Little Miss Sunshine since the first atomic bomb tests. That is why the director, upon completion of primary filming was heard to mutter: "I am become death, Little Miss Sunshine, the destroyer of worlds"
I guess it does. That poster also thinks I have a memory of who he is, which I don't, so the pronouncements coming from that quarter don't ring a bell. You do an imitation pretty well, though. ;)
Such is the awesome power of Little Miss Sunshine that audiences are advised not to look directly at the screen lest they go mad and blind.
The only film in history to use inmates at maximum security asylums for the criminally insane as test audiences, the produces soon found audience members tearing out their eyes halfway through Little Miss Sunshine.
You are confusing being defensive with Defending...
Most if not all of the yahoo's who have posted against this film in this thread have not seen the movie. Yet they pontificate about the movie as if they have seen it.
What I am so adamant about is people commenting on something they have not seen or witnessed directly. I abhor people who jump on a band wagon or celebrate a cause without having first hand knowledge or having done their homework to come to such a position. Most regurgiate generalities or stereotypes long established and over no new insights or original thought.
That is what I am adamant about but not defensive.
LOL
Not me. This conservative loved the movie! Looks like we have a lot of prudes on FR.
Such is the power of Little Miss Sunshine that it will automatically download digusting porn onto the computer of anyone who has attended a showing at their local theater (matinees, excluded). It's powers will reach out to the parking lot and fiddle with your car so that you only get 2 miles per gallon and the "check engine" light stays on all the time. Just passing the theater where Little Miss Sunshine is playing will cause teenagers to break out in scarring acne and dogs to howl...
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