2.5/4
Little Miss Sunshine is a nice film, a cute film. That is its very problem. It is just ‘nice’. It is a comedy about illusions and dreams and hopes, extremely fertile territory for Americans. Yet it does not go nearly as deep into its subject as one senses it hoped to. There is much scope for black comedy here – Steve Carell’s character’s recent suicide attempt, Greg Kinnear’s financially bankrupt but ever hopeful self-help writer, Alan Arkin’s drug-abusing womanising grandpa – but the film never really produces much of the many potentially dark subjects it touches upon, including the horrible world of American pre-teen beauty pageants. With that said, it is a well-performed enjoyable enough comedy, albeit one that does not sit too long in the memory.
