Remembering the year 2006

Written by Michael Arndt
Directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris
Starring Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, Steve Carrell, Paul Dano, Alan Arkin and Abigail Breslin


So far, as Black Sheep has been remembering the last decade in film, I have reviewed a film from each year that I had not already reviewed. For 2006, I’m doing it a little differently. I did review LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE when it was released and, as I am man enough to admit when I’m wrong, I can say that I was unfairly harsh on this indie darling. Sometimes I can be a little bit stubborn and the way this film was being market fed to the public irked me to say the least. It was being positioned as the little quirky movie that would instead of one that could and I just wasn’t happy that Hollywood had made up America’s mind for it before they had the chance to do it themselves. The truth of it is, that they probably would have anyway as LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE is like the film equivalent of getting some much-needed sun.


From the moment Mychael Danna’s plucky, jubilant score begins and the wide-eyed, crystal blue eyes of Abigail Breslin as Little Miss Sunshine hopeful, Olive, stare into the camera, husband and wife directing team, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris suck us into the vacuous life of the Hoover family. Reflected back in Olive’s big thick glasses is not just a newly crowned Miss America but rather the setup of the winners and losers dichotomy that drives this film toward its inevitable end. We are then introduced to the remaining members of the Hoover family, one by one. Each of them is done so by showing us the true core of who they are each day. The father, Richard (Greg Kinnear) is a failed motivational speaker who is having a harder time keeping his own hope alive. The brother, Dwayne (Paul Dano) is working out and crossing off dozens of days on his calendar to show his determination to as yet undisclosed goal. The grandfather, an Oscar winning performance by Alan Arkin, pretty much doesn’t care anymore as he snorts heroine in the bathroom. The mother, Sheryl (Toni Collette), smokes secretly in her car as she tries to keep it all together. And there is a new addition this evening, Uncle Frank (Steve Carrell), fresh from his failed suicide attempt. Although you wouldn’t think it, this family is pretty easy to relate to and a lot of fun to spend time with.


In the opening scene at the dinner table, you quickly learn everything you need to know about how this family works and how close it is to coming completely undone. It is another bucket of chicken for dinner being served on paper plates. They’re barely even trying anymore but yet somewhere underneath the pressure that threatens to consume them all, a little girl wants to be a beauty queen. It doesn’t matter that, to look at her, you would never think to push her in that direction. What does matter is that she wants to win. That is enough to get this dysfunction family into an even less functional yellow Volkswagen bus for a road trip that promises to be transformative for each of them. Of course, they don’t know that when they get into the car and neither do we. Dayton and Faris do a very good job of making it feel as though we too are along for this ride and they do not shy away from letting us in on both the high’s and the low’s. It can make for a very uncomfortable, claustrophobic experience at times but the six actors in this car are each so talented that they bring so many levels to what could have been a very flat journey. Instead, tiny revelations about who they are and who we are grow out of the awkward spaces.


Michael Arndt’s Oscar winning screenplay owns its originality by simply honouring what makes each of its characters human, from their flaws and their fears to the moments where their strengths surprise even them. In the hands of Dayton and Farris, novice feature filmmakers though you would never know it, you can feel the care for the words being said on screen. The choices made to make the points punch, like having two characters discuss where their lives are going when they get to the end of a pier, are so subtle and crafty that you can forgive the few moments that feel somewhat iffy. Like any family though, LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE isn’t perfect. It is however a sign of hope for American families finding their American dreams not working out no matter how hard they keep at it. By the time Olive makes it to her pageant, we’ve all remembered that winning isn’t everything and that trying is all that matters.

On that note, I will try to be a lot less stubborn in the future.


BLACK SHEEP'S 2006 TOP 10

BABEL, Directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inaritu
BORAT, Larry Charles
THE DEPARTED, Martin Scorcese
DREAMGIRLS, Bill Condon
HALF NELSON, Ryan Fleck
LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA, Clint Eastwood
LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris
THE QUEEN, Stephen Frears
UNITED 93, Paul Greengrass

SUNSHINE CLEANING

Written by Megan Holley
Directed by Christine Jeffs
Starring Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, Steve Zahn, Clifton Collins Jr. and Alan Arkin


Rose Lorkowski: Do you think all I can do is clean up other people’s shit?

When some lonely soul walks into a sporting goods store and blows his brains out all over the ceiling with a 20-gage shotgun from behind the counter, someone has got to come in and clean up that mess. Not only would it deter potential shoppers to find leftover bits of brain mass mixed in with the fishing poles but, more importantly, the violence that ripped through the fabric of everyday life needs to be cleaned from memory in order to return to our blissful existences. Enter Rose and Norah Lorkowski (Amy Adams and Emily Blunt), two sisters who reasonably could be a few steps away from the same fate as the man with the shotgun if they got to seriously thinking about their lives. Despite their troubles, the two have paired up to clean up the messes no one else wants to touch. What they lack in style, they make up with smiles as the two try to find life by facing death head on in SUNSHINE CLEANING.


The people who brought you LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE have brought you back to Albuquerque, New Mexico. They also tried to bring back that signature quirk you enjoyed so much last time, even going so far as to cast Alan Arkin in the role of a loud, unconventional grandfather. While they may not have succeeded in recreating that same kind of wide satisfaction, they have crafted a sensitive film that will definitely speak to the millions struggling in America today to forge their own path and bring some semblance of meaning to their lives. When we meet Rose, she is cleaning people’s houses just so she can afford her dilapidated little house. Her sister Norah can’t even be bothered to get out of bed to show up for her pointless waitress job. These are not girls with hope but they find very quickly that hope can come back into your life faster than you would expect and even when after you’ve given up on it.


As far as sisters go, Adams and Blunt are a pretty believable pair. You can tell they care about each other but you know that they also infuriate each other too. Adams’ mousy and unobtrusive demeanor gives Rose, a former prom queen whose popularity has been waning ever since, the delicate balance of hope and resigned defeat necessary to make her sympathetic and likable. You just know that when she exits the shower to repeat the affirmations written on a post-it stuck to her foggy mirror that she only half believes what she’s saying, if that. Blunt on the other hand is not looking for anyone’s acceptance, not even her own. She makes good on her own name and delivers Norah with a direct frankness that reveals more than she realizes. For Norah, hope is not something she tries to force into her life; no, hope for Norah, just finds her and sneaks its own way into her consciousness.


SUNSHINE CLEANING definitely brings the sunshine in but it does so in such a downtrodden fashion that it makes it all the more meaningful to catch a glimpse and easy to ignore the clouds in the sky. It is a healing experience that never feels as though it is forcing its cleansing on the audience or itself. Instead, the sisters just feel compelled to clean because their lives have been dirty for far too long. What they find beneath the grime is an unexpected and infectious grin.

LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE

Written by Michael Arndt
Directed by Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris

LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE is this year’s Sundance breakout and nearly all the press its received thus far has lauded it as, well, a little ray of sunshine to carry audiences through the last month of summer. It is the independent underdog that will tickle your funny bone, stimulate your mind and warm your heart. This little movie has so much to live up to and it has barely even gone wide at the moment I am writing this. LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE isn’t generating its own buzz; it’s having its buzz generated by the machine that wants so badly for it to be that movie it could. Y’know which one I’m talking about. The smaller, simpler movie that allows a more mature audience to wind down their summer, to let the ringing in their ears from all the explosive blockbusters subside. What the machine doesn’t understand is that the movie that fills that particular void is not manufactured. It is genuine and it earns that honour all by itself.

This honour is not one I feel LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE would have earned if it weren’t manufactured for it. Albeit an endearing film with authentic moments of hilarity and sentiment, it is often disconnected and unresolved. The dual director team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris create a believable family unit by giving each member their own personal touch. Dad is a failed motivational speaker; Mom has to deal with loser dad; Grandpa has a heroine problem; older brother has taken a vow of silence until he becomes a fighter pilot; and gay uncle Frank is fresh out of the hospital after trying to kill himself. Dealing themselves such a diverse hand of characters leaves many opportunities to cross the line between quirky and just plain awkward, which they do more often then they should. Then of course there’s Little Miss Sunshine wannabe herself, Olive. With an earnest enthusiasm and innocence beaming from her face (like a ray of … sorry), untouched and uncorrupted Olive reminds the family that they are in fact a family. It’s a lovely story but it is one that only takes shape in the final moments of the film. Prior to that, each character’s individual problems guide all of their own motivations and they only barely have any depth past these problems. Shifting each characters’ focus outwards gives the film some much needed structure but it leaves many an issue either unresolved or resolved far too quickly.


The ensemble cast of LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE reigns as the true heart of this organism. Cramped together in their yellow mini-bus, many different personalities fester. Greg Kinnear and Toni Collette are the heads of the family. Collette is merely a device to highlight the failures of her husband through her aggravation with him. Kinnear’s role however is hefty and he stridently carries that weight as an emasculated patriarch who preaches his failed life lessons to his daughter because she is the only one still buying them. Like another successful family piece, Noah Baumbach’s THE SQUID AND THE WHALE, the influence of the parents on the children manifests before your eyes in a difficult and painful fashion. Steve Carrell plays suicidal uncle, Frank, like a seemingly dormant volcano that may or may not erupt. You just can’t tell. His mystery is heartening and shows promise for his developing capabilities.

As a critic, shedding expectations is a higher state of being I try to achieve before I watch anything. I don’t read other reviews before I see the movie or even before I sit down to write my own, all as an effort to keep it real (dawg). It only takes a quick glance at a magazine cover to get whether people are hating, liking or really loving a movie so it is hard to avoid entirely. But as much as I try to approach each film with a fresh piece of paper to write on, buzz manages to influence the way we see things. When I’m told that something is really solid and it isn’t, even just a little, my disappointment is magnified. LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE has so many things going for it that what it is lacking makes it all the more frustrating because you really want it to live up to the hype. Still ...