Little Miss Sunshine

So, I finally got around to watching Little Miss Sunshine tonight.

To say I overlooked it at the time of its release is inaccurate. I was aware of the Oscars, aware of the critical raving and the fact it had a great little cast. I ended up buying it on DVD before Christmas, but along with other DVDs, it's sat there, gathering dust, waiting to be watched.

So, I expected it to be decent. I didn't quite expect what I got.

See, when critics and the Oscar academy claim movies are both packed with pathos and are "hilarious" I've got used to movies like The Royal Tenenbaums. Wonderfully acted, tightly scripted, usually about as genuinely hilarious as a dose of the clap. The occasional wry smile is apparently what counts as hilarious for many critics.

So, in that respect I didn't expect Little Miss Sunshine to be, well, funny.

And it is.

I mean, ball achingly, genuinely, laugh out loud funny.

What makes Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris' movie is that they both manage to hit the wonderful, bittersweet sad moments of pathos while also celebrating the fact that it's a road movie and road movies are meant to be farcical and hit a few cliches (you know if you take an elderly relative along, it's gonna end in tears, for example). In fact, boil the plot down and it sounds like one of those god-awful road trip movies they churn out by the dozen - a dysfunctional family from New Mexico hop in a VW bus and head to California, where seven-year-old Olive will enter the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant and teach her elders what really matters in life.

It's hard to say why the movie works so well, in that case. Perhaps because it manages to walk the line between being genuinely touching, while avoiding sugary moments, with a wonderfully wicked sense of black humor. It works as a feelgood movie. It works as a satire (the final moments are particularly biting).

And the cast sell it. Alan Arkin won the Oscar for his role as the blunt, foul mouthed, couldn't-give-a-shit grandfather who was turfed out of his nursing home for smoking heroin, but it says something that he doesn't stand out in a cast that are all equally sublime. It's a brilliant piece of ensemble acting.

One of those movies where I should have believed the hype earlier. But if I had, I'd have denied myself the pleasant surprise of having a great movie sneak up on me.

RIP Bernie Mac

I just came home, so I only just heard that Bernie Mac died this weekend, age 50.

That is unexpected.

And sad.

I know a lot of people were against Bernie Mac in the Transformers movie for whatever reason.

I dunno, maybe he did a lot of shitty sitcom work in the US or something.

I didn't know his stuff that well. What I'd seen of him, I liked.

And I liked him in the TF movie.

So, I'm genuinely sad about this.

It really is a shitty year for losing good people.