Sunshine is a Winner

I must admit that I am naturally inclined towards quirky movies that are character-driven, sometimes boring and usually featuring well written dialogue on depressing subjects. My Netflix queue is full of movies that I thought looked weird or interesting, or those that have been recommended somewhere along the way. I usually feel there are a certain number of films that I just need to see to keep up with pop culture. Every once in a while one comes along that takes me off guard because I never saw it coming. Little Miss Sunchine is brilliant in a way that changed my life, per se, but I can honestly say that I haven’t laughed as hard in a long, long time.

This story of a dysfunctional family (one’s bankrupt, one’s a junkie, one doesn’t talk, and one’s suicidal)more accurately reflects our culture than even the “top 10 Google Searches of the year” (Paris Hilton? Myspace?). The movie has elements of a road trip film, a family vacation comedy, and that Blind Melon video with the bee girl. But the ending is spectacularly funny. Are you a winner or a loser? Well, in Little Miss Sunshine the message seems to be that sometimes the best choice of all is deciding not to even play the game. If only we all could have family bonding to “Superfreak” every once in a while! Despite all the strangeness, as the broken-down bus heads for home we somehow know that this family is going to be just fine.