I hated "Little Miss Sunshine" when it came out (as I said in January 2007). Here's something I wrote in December '09, reacting to a list of the worst movies of the decade:
... I don't need a decade-end list of the very worst crap that you [critics] saw and I didn't see. I'd rather make a list of the worst movies that you... gulled me into seeing. What did you say was good that I wasted my time and money on?I considered it the worst movie I'd seen in the decade. Emphasis on seen, because I don't bother to look at movies that get bad reviews.
Help me make a list...
1. "Little Miss Sunshine"...
And here's something I wrote in December 2008:
I'm seeing all the well-reviewed year-end movies, and there's an awful lot of wrong-age sex. "Doubt" is about a priest accused of molesting children. "Benjamin Button," with its backwards aging character, had scenes of an old man in love with a young girl and an old woman in love with a toddler. "The Reader" had a 36-year-old woman seducing a 15-year-old boy. "Milk" had a man in his 40s pursuing relationships with much younger (and more fragile) men. "Slumdog Millionaire" shows a young teenage girl being sold for sex. I say that Hollywood is delivering pedophiliac titillation with the deniability of artistic pretension.
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73 comments:
Really? There's nothing titillating about Little Miss Sunshine. It looks like a "that's not funny" problem.
Little Miss Sunshine is a great movie, it's on our "watch again" list.
I'm in agreement about little miss sunshine. Now I did laugh at the end because it was kinda funny. but the entire lead-up to the end was so freaking boring.
I didn't think Olive was overly sexual. I'm trying to recall if that's what I thought?
The Rick James song IS overly sexual and not appropriate for a young girl - but that is what made it sorta funny.
kinda sad to revolve a movie around the ending gotcha - Grandpa helping Olive get jiggy with a song that is she probably does not understand. It was sort of a slap at all the mom's who doll up their little girls ala the JonBenet' Ramsey daughter. another lecture from Hillarywoodland.
excellent observations, just goes to prove Hollywood's flirtation with sexualizing children is nothing new.
however, i don't think Doubt belongs on the list, because although the priest was accused, we the views never had visual evidence of the possible crime, only of the opportunity. the boys were not sexualized, they were just boys.
the film was properly named.
I dunno is Little Miss Sunshine is a "watch it again" movie. It's a long, shaggy dog joke where the final song and dance routine are the end of the joke.
I generally "get" and enjoy satire, but I found Little Miss Sunshine to be execrable. It was the first movie that left me feeling that "all is lost" from a cultural perspective. No, that's not quite it. It wasn't the movie itself. It was the overwhelmingly laudatory reviews of such a coarse and cynical work that left me feeling that way.
Did they do casting out of a pizza shop in DC?
That's like saying you can't have kids in anything without exploiting them. Anyway the movie is fundamentally about how once you're old, there's really no reason not to become a derelict drug abuser, if you enjoy it. It's more exploitative of the elderly than the little girl.
At least half the police/detective shows today have pedophiles being tracked down, so that there can be evil vs good as well as long stretches of psychological struggle to fill the gaps. It's the modern version of a hero with a drinking problem. No script is necessary and there's lots of acting. Apparently actors are cheaper than writers.
Adam Corolla had withering criticism for "Little Miss Sunshine," but it wasn't about sexualized kids, if I recall. He criticized the way the film positioned the drug-addict grandfather and suicidal uncle(?) as role models for the girl, while her father was portrayed as an impotent loser. I did not see the film.
The evil guy in The Fall (Amazon prime), serial killer and abused as a child, had the virtue of being a nice guy about half the time, helpful to women, empathetic, good advice giver. It's amazing to see a serial killer with such good character, until you realize it's an actor and he can be anything he wants. Act good, act bad, no problem.
I'll go with Althouse on this, not so much on the too-young sex angle but just the simple "not nearly as funny as the critics insisted" perspective.
I remember our main local movie critic adored "Little Miss Sunshine" and in his review compared it to Jack Black's "Nacho Libre," which he called "disappointing."
"Nacho Libre" is a LOT funnier than "Little Miss Sunshine," and has a genuinely sweet heart as well.
'LMS' was pretty harmless.
My only beef was that, like many of these 'small' films, it went out of its way to be quirky.
Besides, I will watch Kinnear in anything. He ever seems to take himself too seriously and seems to be having fun.
It was good that the grandfather was able to pass along his worldview to the little girl. It will protect her in a PC world.
"At least half the police/detective shows today have pedophiles being tracked down..."
Because you can't do Arabs anymore. Russians can still be the bad guys because they're pretty damned white.
Kind of like how all the criminals in the burglar alarm/home invasion commercials are white : )
Also notice that if a priest is a pedophile he is preying (sorry) on girls and not boys. No bad homosexuals ever!
I watched LMS for Steve Carell because he was good in Get Smart (2008). Playing, as Hollywood requires, a clumsy male, but who winds up the best secret agent, winniug the feminist lady who had been contemptuous of him. Some stumbles in the storyline because there were two groups of writers with conflicting ideas.
Never saw LMS. I looked it up. Won't see it because not interested in plot. I was amazed at how little money it made. Budget was $8 million. Box Office was $10.1 million.
LMS was a movie where I not only thought was not funny, I didn't understand what was supposed to be funny about it, which was unusual for me. I didn't think The Hangover was funny, but I at least understood what the jokes were supposed to be.
Very fine people don’t like Little Miss Sunshine.
I barely remember Little Miss Sunshine, but I think I enjoyed it. The criticism of Benjamin Button is misplaced--the plot device driving the story is that the guy aged backwards. So while the two people may have been very different physical ages at the beginning and the end, they were the same emotional age. And their physical relationship was limited to the period where they met in the middle. So I don't see what the problem is.
Netflix: We're deeply sorry for the inappropriate artwork that we used for Mignonnes/Cuties. It was not OK, nor was it representative of this French film which won an award at Sundance. We’ve now updated the pictures and description.
artwork = suggestive photographs of children. Then they try to blame the French...
I always get if confused with Sunshine Cleaning....
I just re-watched Little Miss Sunshine, it's a great movie! I will say I didn't want to watch it originally because the trailer was so bad. But it is a classic.
The difference between the two is night and day. LMS mocks its characters for the performance whole Cuties celebrates it. I'm not anti-this movie, it is what it is. But that poster (and the title, quite frankly) don't help.
"Little Miss Sunshine" is on my top 10 favorite movies, or maybe even top 5 depending on my mood.
I'm not sure that can be explained properly to someone who hated it. But to try and explain part of its appeal for me, it's because it's about ordinary Americans as a family, each with his or her own dreams and aspirations and disappointments and failures and pretty much just each other to look to and lean on. It's funny and touching and it's very well acted.
At the end when the Dad and the other family members see what the beauty pageant is all about, it's clear from their reactions that they had had no idea about how creepy and weird it would be. (In the very beginning of the movie it's explained that the little girl Olive entered the competition when she was staying at an aunt's house). And they get together when it all falls apart to protect Olive who doesn't fit in with the other contestants. Because they're a family.
We re-watched Little Miss Sunshine last week because we were on a mini-Toni-Collette binge: “Muriel’s Wedding,” “About A Boy,” “LMS.” We thought the film was funny and held up quite well (certainly a lot better than another film From about that time: “Benjamin Button” which was disappointing compared to how I remembered it).
We’re currently bingeing on Charlie Kaufman films: Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine, Human Nature, Synechdoche.
There's nothing titillating about Little Miss Sunshine.
That was Althouse's objection? That's not funny.
I didn't see any sexuality in that chubby girl, dancing or not. The other girls on stage were mostly embarrassing in being so serious about a silly activity.
The van was probably my favorite character.
Say what you will about Hollywood but it's nowhere near as creepy and overt as the pedophile problem in FRENCH culture.
French director Louis Malle (of Althouse's favorite movie "My Dinner with Andre") made "Pretty Baby," about a child prostitute, and showed her buck naked in the movie; and don't forget Charlotte Gainsbourg's album "Lemon Incest" and accompanying movie made with her greasy father Serge. I guess the French just eat this stuff up. Of course "Cuties" is a FRENCH movie.
Little Miss Sunshine Sucked. It was terrible. Hollywood producers love having very young girls in their movies since (1) they're cheap and (2) easy to have sex with. Polanski LOVED having sex with girls who were 13/14. I think the girl he raped was only 14. Going way back, Chaplin has settle several underage sex lawsuits, and was charged with statutory rape. IRC, he met and starting having sex with his last wife when she was 16.
I don't remember much about LSM. But in general, I don't like movies with snarky, sexualized young kids. Nor smutty, hip, old people. Film audiences are the exact opposite. Nothing has them rolling in the aisles more than some old woman saying "fuck" or a 10 year-old girl mouthing off or making a sexual double-entendre.
Remember when Prince Andrew said that he couldn’t have had sex with that 15 year old in the picture with him because he was at a children’s pizza party that day? Good times.
You didn't like Lost in Translation?!
I get enough Steve Carell because my wife and kids love the (American) Office. I watched LMS for Alan Arkin, could never get enough of that guy. He's naturally hilarious.
He was in Get Smart too. But in Glengarry Glen Ross he was at his comic and pathetic best.
He was a bit annoyingly smug in the roles I've seen when he was younger, including Catch-22, but as an old guy he hit his peak.
Good lord, there are some sense of humor transplants sorely needed here. Or perhaps just an explanation of what 'Little Miss Sunshine' was about... It didn't seem terribly nuanced to me.
Iris' "strip tease" - which comprised her shedding sweatpants and shirt, revealing herself in silly shorts and tank top - was precisely to disparage and ridicule that which some of you are atwitter about: The exploitation of young girls with these absurd beauty contests. It wasn't about Iris doing, or trying to do, anything lascivious.
Or did someone somewhere get turned on by it?
I'm seeing all the well-reviewed year-end movies, and there's an awful lot of wrong-age sex. "Doubt" is about a priest accused of molesting children.
But in Doubt, at least, everyone's agreed that an adult having sex with a kid is wrong (expect, sadly, for his mother. Who's willing to give her son to a child mollester, as long as that abuser protects her some from everyone else).
I don't like movies that sexualize children. Doubt was an excellent movie that I like very much
CJinPA said..."Adam Corolla had withering criticism for 'Little Miss Sunshine,' but it wasn't about sexualized kids, if I recall. He criticized the way the film positioned the drug-addict grandfather and suicidal uncle(?) as role models for the girl, while her father was portrayed as an impotent loser. I did not see the film."
Very solid analysis. My recollection is that all of the adult major characters were contemptible, each for different reasons. The fact that the movie appears to be beloved by so many continues to trouble me.
Something about the smirking portrayal of dysfunction reminds me a bit of another wildly over-lauded film, American Beauty.
"I barely remember Little Miss Sunshine, but I think I enjoyed it. The criticism of Benjamin Button is misplaced--the plot device driving the story is that the guy aged backwards. So while the two people may have been very different physical ages at the beginning and the end, they were the same emotional age. And their physical relationship was limited to the period where they met in the middle. So I don't see what the problem is."
Of course, I understand the story! But the story provided a cover for the depiction of sexual behavior between an adult and a child.
Similarly, in LMS, the child's innocence was supposed to make it okay that she was doing things that an adult sees as sexual. Getting children to do that for your amusement is wrong.
"French director Louis Malle (of Althouse's favorite movie "My Dinner with Andre") made "Pretty Baby," ..."
Not to mention "Murmur of the Heart"!
Family members pushed me to watch LMS. I found it unfunny. And I'm a big Alan Arkin fan.
Have I missed the comment(s) where Hollywood gave a standing O to a convicted pedophile who split the country to avoid imprisonment?
It's called a sense of humor. You have perception, which includes discrimination. If you find that you laugh at everything that is supposed to be funny, that is poking you in the ribs... I don't think that reflects strong perception. It might be an indication of low perception.
Do you imagine that a person who cries at everything that tugs at the heartstrings has impressive discernment? There's a reason why we remember Oscar Wilde's "One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing." Reverse that and you can see my point about a sense of humor.
Another upvote for Greg Kinnear, he’s always good and plays good people in mostly good movies.
Especially after seeing him in “Heaven is for Real” —a mainstream Hollywood actor playing a major character in a Christian-friendly movie — he’s A-OK in my book.
Ann Althouse said...Of course, I understand the story! But the story provided a cover for the depiction of sexual behavior between an adult and a child.
Do you understand the story? Because it does nothing of the sort.
Taking a hard stance against putting fictional children into sexual situations, however heartfelt and righteous that stance is, could provide a bit of internal relief for some people who accept other forms of sexual perversity, however heartfelt and righteous that acceptance is.
There's probably a German word for such things.
Low perception, as Althouse calls it is the ability to not take oneself seriously. IOW, lacking what The Whom's Roger Daltry calls Eminence Front. It's a put on.
If you find that you laugh at everything that is supposed to be funny, that is poking you in the ribs... I don't think that reflects strong perception. It might be an indication of low perception.
Humorless retired Midwestern school teacher imagines prurient penumbras in the emanations. Details at 11.
"Good lord, there are some sense of humor transplants sorely needed here."
Yeah, like I said some people, and movie audiences in particular, will laugh at anything. At least people in comedy clubs have an excuse, most of them are either stoned or drunk. The fact that someone thinks a smutty old lady or a mouthy 10 y/o girl is hilarious, doesn't show you have some grand Sense of Humor, it just means you'll laugh at anything. Like someone farting, or doing a pratfall, or spilling the wine down their shirt. If you howl with laughter at some old cornball joke or commonplace risque remark, what do you do when they say something extraordinarily witty?
Hollywood: Feel free to steal the following. Your audiences will die laughing.
"How do you get down from an Elephant? Answer: you don't get down from an elephant, you get down from a Goose."
Little Miss Eternal Sunshine of the Pedoless Mind?
Never even heard of this movie. Once upon a time I had no internet and was blissfully unaware of most pop culture.
The Reader was a great movie. Completely arresting. I guess I don’t get too concerned about a woman seducing a teenaged boy since any normal boy of that age walks around all day with a chubby and a fevered imagination. It’s difficult to see the harm. Seducing a young girl is another matter entirely. The harm is immediately apparent.
- Krumhorn
Somehow the idea of equality has gotten transferred from Politics to the arts and entertainment. And so everyone's taste is equal, all art/music/etc. is equal, and there are no objective standards. And so some crap movie that no one will remember next year is equal to Citizen Kane or Seven Samurai, Taylor Swift equals Mozart, the local playwright is just as good as Shakespeare, and Little Miss Sunshine is a comic masterpiece like City Lights or Duck Soup.
This fits in, wit the new progressive thinking. For example, in Science Fiction, the NEW THINKING is that the Canon - the old masters - are just a bunch of boring old farts, white men who's day is past. Why read them when you can read "My Gay Dinosaur" by the latest hot young writer. Goodbye Asimov and Ray Bradbury, Hello "Red Shirts" or whatever is popular.
Little Miss Sunshine was an Alan Arkin movie, so it gets a pass.
Movies acquired less of my interest less of my interest once I realized the writing and directing were being heavily influenced by the intake of drugs. Some of the smarter ones try to squeeze in their inclinations subtly. I probably need a drug panel rating now to watch most movies. The drug abuse environment does lead to child abuse. I see no reason why rich people taking drugs would be an exception.
“ I hated "Little Miss Sunshine" when it came out (as I said in January 2007). Here's something I wrote in December '09, reacting to a list of the worst movies of the decade”
Me too. What’s wrong with us? It was bad on so many levels.
My wife loved it.
“ Blogger Dan in Philly said...
LMS was a movie where I not only thought was not funny, I didn't understand what was supposed to be funny about it, which was unusual for me. I didn't think The Hangover was funny, but I at least understood what the jokes were supposed to be.”
I like you, and I’d like to subscribe to your newsletter! We seem to be in synch.
FWIW I loved LMS. I guess folks have different senses of humor.
“ Blogger daskol said...
I get enough Steve Carell because my wife and kids love the (American) Office. I watched LMS for Alan Arkin, could never get enough of that guy. He's naturally hilarious.”
Alan Arkin is normally fantastic. But he was not enough to save this dog of a movie.
Notable Arkin performances:
So I Married an Ax Murderer
In Laws (“Serpentine, Shel! Serpentine!”)
Argo
Gross Pointe Blank
Glengarry Glen Ross
Edward Scissorhands
As far as ages, Biden was 35 when he married Dr. Jill, EdD, she was 26. So using the half plus 7 rule this finds a lower limit of 24.5. Jill was safe by a year and a half.
BTW Louis Malle was married, until his death, to Candace Bergen.
Can we move on now?
No irony intended
Heinlein is right out.
---The line, "He jacked a little, bitty baby" was written as "He raped a little, bitty baby," but Steven Tyler changed it at the request of John Kalodner, an executive at Aerosmith's record company who looked out for their commercial interests - he thought radio stations wouldn't play the song if it was too graphic. According to Tyler, Kalodner also asked him to change the line "put a bullet in his brain" to "stand out in the pouring rain," but he refused.
Steven Tyler admitted to Rolling Stone that he was attracted to his daughter, Liv. Said Tyler, "How can a father not be attracted to his daughter, especially when she's a cross between the girl he married and himself?" He continued: "All a man has to do is be totally honest with himself and he can see it. However, the real man knows that's just a place to never go. Instead he celebrates it by telling his daughter how beautiful she is and what a precious child of God she is. There's ways to love it without making love to it - I wrote 'Janie's Got A Gun' about fathers who don't know the difference."---
-https://www.songfacts.com/facts/aerosmith/janies-got-a-gun
Little Miss Sunshine was about the JonBenet Ramsey plague.
Link to a twitter tread our friend from the Mayo clinic recommended on a seemingly under the radar attempt to normalize pedo.
Steven Tyler admitted to Rolling Stone that he was attracted to his daughter, Liv. Said Tyler, "How can a father not be attracted to his daughter, especially when she's a cross between the girl he married and himself?" He continued: "All a man has to do is be totally honest with himself and he can see it. However, the real man knows that's just a place to never go. Instead he celebrates it by telling his daughter how beautiful she is and what a precious child of God she is.
This is worth repeating. As humans, we have choices. As civilized people, there is an order (e.g. religion/morality, ethics) to our choices. Just because we can, doesn't mean we should, by choice.
i vaguely remember the movie after i saw this -
IMDb has this for Storyline
In Albuquerque, Sheryl Hoover brings her suicidal brother Frank to the breast of her dysfunctional and emotionally bankrupted family. Frank is homosexual, an expert in Proust. He tried to commit suicide when he was rejected by his boyfriend and his great competitor became renowned and recognized as number one in the field of Proust. Sheryl's husband Richard is unsuccessfully trying to sell his self-help and self-improvement technique using nine steps to reach success, but he is actually a complete loser. Her son Dwayne has taken a vow of silence as a follower of Nietzsche and aims to be a jet pilot. Dwayne's grandfather Edwin was sent away from the institution for elders (Sunset Manor) and is addicted in heroin.
Sally327 said...
"Little Miss Sunshine" is on my top 10 favorite movies, or maybe even top 5 depending on my mood.
I'm not sure that can be explained properly to someone who hated it. But to try and explain part of its appeal for me, it's because it's about ordinary Americans as a family, each with his or her own dreams and aspirations and disappointments and failures and pretty much just each other to look to and lean on.
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this movie is rated R (so not suitable for children?) for ordinary Americans as Hollywood sees them? - would not success or failure mean : do Americans see their "reflection" in the movie
Steven Tyler admitted to Rolling Stone that he was attracted to his daughter
I would leave this part out. It is sufficient to say: "how beautiful she is and what a precious child of God she is". There is no need to unload your conscience, burden hers, and play to the depths of your interrogator.
"Little Miss Sunshine" was the worst movie experience in my life. Worse than "Tommy." Worse than David Lynch's "Dune." Worse than "Looking for Mr. Goodbar." The dinner table scene sets the mood of the film. The viewer is constantly inundated with unbearable male personalities - the crass grandpa, the unemployed and depressed scholar of depressing existentialism, the emo kid with bitterness cranked way past eleven. All top off by the pathetic father - it is painful to see him desperately trying to sell his motivational plan. The film goes on and on with no respite from this human debris. (Sam Kinison mode) WHY IN THE NAME OF EVERYTHING HOLY, UNHOLY AND EVERYTHING ELSE IN BETWEEN CAN'T THE CLOVERFIELD MONSTER SWOOP IN AND PUT US OUT OF OUR MISERY AND EAT THE MALE CAST??? AAAAAAAA! AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!(/Sam Kinison mode)
The film finally lets up on the thumbscrews when the grandpa dies. To me the big insult from Olive's dance routine is that her grandpa set her up to make a fool out of herself in public. It is a crude way to take a swipe at this form of beauty pageant, contrasting Olive's trashy but unsexy performance with the JonBenét Ramsey clones. The dad and uncle cheer in part as a middle finger to the pageant organizers and in part to celebrate that somebody's Plan A actually succeeded. The end of the film is actually quite poignant, when emo kid from hell ponders something his dad's motivational plan never anticipated, the need for a Plan B.
Sending an audio recording of the above paragraphs to the directors has made my bucket list.
Never seen LMS, don't remember ever knowing of its existence (but if Althouse blogged it, I probably did). Based on Narayanan's & Wikipedia's plot summaries, it sounds like a movie I would absolutely loathe. The summaries themselves seem like a joke about "how much 'edgy' crap can we cram into our shitty movie?".
Temujin said..."Little Miss Sunshine was an Alan Arkin movie, so it gets a pass."
In keeping with this comment thread, I had the opposite reaction. Arkin's judgment in accepting the role of Edwin Hoover has tainted my opinion of him beyond repair.
Couldn't watch LMS thru to the "gotcha" ending. Don't care. Every frame was so calculatedly "quirky," it gave quirky a bad name. Not a genuine moment.
Odds that Cuties season 2 do a routine to WAP?
Ann Althouse said...
"Of course, I understand the story! But the story provided a cover for the depiction of sexual behavior between an adult and a child.
"Similarly, in LMS, the child's innocence was supposed to make it okay that she was doing things that an adult sees as sexual. Getting children to do that for your amusement is wrong."
Now that's its long-time pedophilia is getting exposed, Hollyweird is pushing the perversion openly. Their view of the ideal society is, literally, privileged adults get to have sex with anyone they want, whenever they want, of any age, with or without consent of the partner. The rest of us get to be grateful we are allowed to service them.
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