Dir. Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, US, 2006, 101mins
Cast: Abigail Breslin, Greg Kinnear, Paul Dano, Alan Arkin, Toni Collette, Steve Carell
Review by Kevin Holme
This quirky tale of a dysfunctional American family who embark on a road trip across America in a VW camper van to enter their daughter into a beauty pageant for young girls is full of knowing wit and affectionate, yet flawed, characters. It’s got a fine cast of actors and thankfully all are put to great use, even the young Abigail Breslin as Olive who - like the rest of them - shines throughout.
The opening of the movie sets up the characters succinctly, introducing us to a Nietzsche reading teenager (Dano) who has taken a vow of silence; a heroin snorting Grandad (the ever excellent and hilarious Arkin whose performance is absolutely superb); an overburdened mum (Collette); an overbearing dad (Kinnear) who teaches seminars on his nine steps to becoming a success, and a depressed, suicidal brother-in-law, the No.1 Proust scholar in America played by the marvellous Steve Carell. The script is witty and astute and full of dark humour with some laugh out loud moments and the dialogue between the family strikes a perfect balance between caring and hateful, which makes them believable and more importantly, likeable. It also has some subtle digs at various aspects of American family life (more Simpsons than Waltons) and at it’s obsession with beauty pageants for young girls, who should really be dressing up dolls rather than getting dressed and dolled up themselves. We see, once the family finally make it, the results of letting children (and adults) indulge such a desire and it’s all rather freaky. The girls look, as sweet as they are, rather grotesque with their layers of make-up and sexualised clothes and it makes for some disturbing Bakhtinian images. Think Brasseye’s paedophile special with the little beauty queens who want plastic surgery and you won’t be far off.
While the film’s subject matter is gloomy, ranging from death and failure to depression and suicide, the tone is one of optimism, remaining upbeat, full of gentle, touching moments between family members as well as screaming rows and put downs. Like all road trips, the further they progress on their course the more they learn about each other and themselves, each going through a transformation and concluding that, despite all the crap that goes on in the world if you stick together you’ll pull through. A slightly twee message you may think and one that would have become grating in a more large scale Hollywood production, but because of the well drawn out characters, the script, the appeal of the actors and the fantastic yet subtle performances from the cast it remains charming, funny and heart warming. Some films wouldn’t manage to pull this off without the viewer feeling like they’ve been cheated or that they were being preached to, but using the blackly comic moments as a welcome and clever respite the film manages to flit effortlessly between the comic and the tragic - knowing these are two sides of the same coin - so that our emotions are forever fluctuating between joy and sadness. It’s a perfect combination and the script and direction pull it off brilliantly, never once does it feel contrived, wearisome or manipulative, a trap it could so easily have fallen into.
This is a feel good movie that manages to get just the right balance between affection for its characters and taking the piss out of them. Its self-effacing humour and touching family bonding will have you laughing whilst basking in its warm glow - it’s definitely a little ray of sunshine, but one that also acknowledges the debt it owes to those grey clouds without which it would have nothing to contrast with. Like the latest instalment of the Griswald family, only directed by Ingmar Bergman - National Lampoon’s Savage Vacation in an Absurd & Uncaring Universe, perhaps?
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