‘Little Miss Sunshine’

MANDWA

Islamabad

Director: Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris

Cast: Abagail Breslin, Alan Arkin

Lok Virsa Film Club screening American movie 'Little Miss Sunshine' today (Saturday), at 3 p.m.

‘Little Miss Sunshine’ from 2006 is the most hilarious movie made in the recent years. Made at a budget of $8 million, the film was able to make more $100 million at the box office. It was nominated for several Academy Awards and won two for Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor (Alan Arkin).

We have a dozen major players here: fathers, brothers, uncles and grandparents. Ironically, dysfunctional parts in this family are evident from the beginning. Our heroine is a seven-year old girl, olive, who would love to participate in a beauty pageant. 

Ironically, she is chubby and bespectacled but Olive would not care for such trivialities. The family neither has the resources nor the money to send her for the competition. The entire family joins hands together to realise the child's dream. Just in two days the family must make 200-mile trip to California in a rundown (almost broken down) van. 

For us, the audiences, this turns out to be most exciting road movie where the van breaks down a dozen times, mechanical hiccups, family arguments, more troubles, more crises. Half-way through this adventurous trip, the family realises the importance of help and support from each other. Members pass away from addiction, fail to get business contracts, heartbreaking separations, suicide attempts and police encounters. The comic climax comes with race to meet the deadline. A critic called it a film where sanity takes a back seat. 

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