Little Miss Sunshine | Rotten Tomatoes (2024)

FAQs

What is the message behind Little Miss Sunshine? ›

Little Miss Sunshine is a black comedy aimed at adults. It exposes the hypocrisy in children's beauty pageants as well as the myth of winners versus losers. The main messages from this movie are that so called 'losers' can be winners too and that body image is irrelevant in the broad scheme of things.

From the interactions, family values can be seen. As the final result, it can be said that “l*ttle Miss Sunshine” movie an American family values. In this film all the members support each other to help and solve the problem together, despite the fact that the family members are in conflict with one another.

But here's the point the film makes – it's not the end of the world. The family members, in all their eccentricities, have an important realisation – accept the lesson that failure brings. They accept themselves, their situations, and each other, and decide to make the best of it.

Richard's ideas are rejected again, and he returns to the motel. Olive wakes her parents in the morning because "Grandpa won't wake up." Edwin is rushed to the hospital where he is pronounced dead of an apparent heroin overdose.

Little Miss Sunshine (2006)

Despite the cutesy premise of Little Miss Sunshine, the movie explores mental illness, such as depression and suicide, as some of the characters grapple with their mental health.

Drug and Alcohol Content

Grandpa is twice observed snorting heroin. A conversation related to his drug abuse illuminates his twisted thinking: It's OK for him to use the potentially lethal substance because he's old and close to death, anyway. But it's not OK for Dwayne to indulge, because he's still young.

The movie Little Miss Sunshine, directed by Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton, released in 2006, teaches us that it is okay to be sad. It is okay to scream, to cry, to lose, to be yourself.

As Finamore illustrates, “Dwayne seems to typify the plight of the contemporary angst-ridden adolescent” (124). But it is the non-verbal border created by Dwayne which ensures his isolation from the world. He takes a vow of silence to prove his discipline until he achieves his dream of becoming a fighter pilot.

When Richard states “Those women in Miss America, are they skinny or are they fat? I guess they don't eat a lot of ice cream”, the use of hypophora shows that Richard is confident in his assumption that to win a pageant, women need to be slim, which means they don't eat ice-cream.

Frank is a Proust scholar, but recent events have caused him to lose control over his life. The man he loves has left him for his academic rival, and Frank has lost his job. The film explores the theme of family bonding and how this helps each member of the Hoover family find themselves.

What is the plot of Little Miss Sunshine summary? ›

The Hoover family -- a man (Greg Kinnear), his wife (Toni Collette), an uncle (Steve Carell), a brother (Paul Dano) and a grandfather (Alan Arkin) -- puts the fun back in dysfunctional by piling into a VW bus and heading to California to support a daughter (Abigail Breslin) in her bid to win the Little Miss Sunshine Contest. The sanity of everyone involved is stretched to the limit as the group's quirks cause epic problems as they travel along their interstate route.

Little Miss Sunshine / Film synopsis

"Little Miss Sunshine" is THAT kind of film...it's the kind of film that makes you laugh, makes you cry, makes you think and makes you feel. It presents its characters, the Hoover family, with honesty rather than histrionics and compassion dipped with a healthy coating of life-weary cynicism.

An ardent believer in the philosophy of Fredrick Nietzsche, Dwyane has taken a vow of silence until he achieves his dream of becoming a test pilot for the Air Force. He also claims to hate everyone.

Dwayne, Sheryl's Nietzsche-reading teenage son from a previous marriage, has taken a vow of silence until he can accomplish his dream of becoming a fighter pilot.

Grandpa snorts heroin and then reacts to that. We see an elderly man snort heroin. There is conversation about heroin use. One character urges a teen not to start using it.

It is all in the context. If a little girl , or for that matter a teenager or adult woman is always happy go lucky, smiling, fi ull of fun, and optimistic, she can be referred to , or to her face, as Liitle miss sunshine”.

As the Hoover family start the 700-mile drive back to Albuquerque, the yellow VW campervan provides the powerful symbol of this resilience, of the traversing of boundaries and the refusal to accept the adversities placed before them. The Hoovers travel back to Albuquerque in their VW Van..

Is "Little Miss Sunshine" based on a book? Little Miss Sunshine is based on a screenplay by American screenwriter Michael Arndt. Interestingly, Arndt was fired because Fox Searchlight wanted to change the script, but he was rehired four weeks later after the new writer quit.