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Spoilers for Little Miss Sunshine (2006). Trigger warnings for discussions of drug use and suicide.
Olive Hoover (Abigail Breslin) is completely herself. She is a little girl with a big dream: winning the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant. She works hard on this, training every day with her grandpa.
And while watching the movie, which is really entertaining, involving and intense, you might forget to wonder: “why is a grandpa helping a little girl practise for a beauty contest?”.
The answer comes at the very end of the movie.
The pageant is the finale of the road trip taken by this weird and chaotic family accompanying Olive, but it’s never the focus of the film and the watcher forgets about it too.
So, when the climax does arrive, it’s in the most unexpected and tragi-comic way ever. But let’s respect the plot and move chronologically to show why it is a scene that will blow your mind.
Olive is a very colourful girl, with her own style. She always smiling and nice. Around her, in her family, chaos dominates.
Her mother Sheryl and father Richard (Toni Collette and Greg Kinnear) quarrel all the time and her father likes to criticize a lot. Her emo brother Dwayne (Paul Dano) has vowed not to say a word until he becomes a jet pilot. Her uncle Frank (Steve Carell) has just tried to commit suicide and her grandpa Edwin (Alan Arkin) is addicted to cocaine and indecent.
The contrast is obvious: an explosion of colours vs. a world of darkness in all its nuances. The rainbow that Olive represents is also the total opposite of the beauty contest environment.
These are the ingredients of a great tragi-comic movie, all summarised in one of the best quotes of all time. Dwayne is convinced (forced) to join the family trip and he jots on a paper:
“But I’m not going to have any fun.”
The quietest character in the movie is also the funniest one. Forced to share a bedroom with his uncle, before going to bed Dwayne writes another note to Frank:
“Please don’t try to kill yourself tonight.”
We’re then introduced to the bus, which is as much of a protagonist as the characters. On the outside, this old Volkswagen bus reflects Olive in style and design. Inside, it’s darker as we can observe the characters in depth.
Grandpa Edwin starts talking about fucking and heroin with no limits of decency. Richard, who is a motivational coach in need of motivation himself, starts lecturing everybody about how to be successful in life. To the point that he convinces Olive not to eat ice cream if she is going to be a beauty queen. “No beauty queen is fat,” he tells her.
However, it is here that we start to see the strength of this family as they recognise the toxicity of Richard’s advice and convince Olive to enjoy her ice cream.
This is just the prelude of a lot of discussions that take place inside the bus and bring everybody together.
Perhaps the bus is more of an antagonist. Like the family, it is shown to have a lot of problems. The clutch doesn’t work, so they have to work together to push the bus to get it to start. It’s a kind of team-building that makes things better among them.
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Then the horn breaks and just keeps on… horning, generating an incredible amount of noise. Noise is another protagonist in the movie, in the form of shouting, quarrelling, horning, and loud music. In constant contrast with Dwayne’s vow of silence.
There are a lot of obstacles on the way to the pageant. Obstacles that make this family talk more, understand each other better and work together to achieve their final goal.
They make it at the end of the film. The family sits in the theatre and waits for the contest, excited to see Olive. They have never seen her show before, only Grandpa knew what to expect.
Noise rears its head again. Loud music starts, and a lot of singing, dancing, acting, and showing off are all framed by a manic need for attention. The father of one of the contestants, a habitué, is wearing earplugs. He knows how it is.
These little girls are dressed like adult women, with sexy outfits and make-up. They act unnaturally for kids their age. It’s pretty shocking to see.
The moment we’ve been waiting for comes when Olive takes the stage. The whole film has been building to this. The music starts. It’s Super Freak by Rick James, a song with sexually explicit content.
And Olive starts stripping! Her grandpa taught her how to strip! Not literally, of course, the moves are just as suggestive.
The scene is so absurd that it makes your jaw drop, and then it becomes hilarious. The audience thinks this is disgusting that a little girl can strip, but not her family. They’re taken aback sure, but they quickly rally to support her.
There’s a double standard to the whole event. Is it more absurd that a little girl can wear heavy make-up, and an evening dress and act like an adult, as with the other kids, or is it worse to take the pageant to its next logical step and imitate a stripper?
It’s an invitation to embrace diversity and review your opinions, to change your perspective.
But sometimes, like in life, you don’t know whether to laugh or cry and this is exactly why this was the most tragi-comic scene I have ever seen in a movie.
Directors: Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris
Writer: Michael Arndt
Cast: Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, Steve Carell, Alan Arkin, Abigail Breslin and Paul Dano