No one in their right mind would yearn to spend time with the Hoovers. The parents catfight. The uncle bears visible scars from a suicide attempt. The grandfather spouts profanity when not snorting heroin. The kids are melancholy and deluded.
And yet this low budget, R-rated indie dramedy boasts a $57 million take and an armload of Grammy and Golden Globe nominations. “Little Miss Sunshine,” directed by music video vets Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, obviously resonated with audiences.
It’s still playing at a handful of metro-area theaters five months after its premiere, but “Sunshine” also hits DVD shelves today – just in time for that last-minute stocking stuffer.
The movie’s initial success, largely a word-of-mouth phenomenon after it killed at Sundance, is attributable to a few factors. The even-handed direction balances the tone between absurd and poignant. The lean script by Michael Arndt never compromises the characters’ idiosyncratic voices. The acting is superb across the board.
Steve Carell, best known as the title character of “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” shows his dramatic mettle in a career-lifting turn as a depressed Proust scholar. The dependably excellent Greg Kinnear and Alan Arkin add gravitas and whimsy in their roles as the father and grandfather, respectively. Toni Collette takes what could have been a flat role as the long-suffering mother and laces it with inner strength.
The kids (dour Dwayne and hopeful young Olive) feel real enough to touch, a rarity in many comedies. The plot concerns the family’s desperate road trip to California in a dilapidated VW bus to enter Olive into a beauty contest. Along the way is death, mechanical failure and harsh realizations about each characters’ futures.
Trust me, it’s more uplifting than it sounds.
Most DVDs feature audio commentary from the film’s principals, but “Sunshine” makes one of the best uses of it in recent memory. Viewers can listen to commentary from the directors and screenwriter, or the directors alone, and both are focused and enlightening. Husband-wife team Dayton and Faris are hyper-aware and articulate, and their insights into the making of the film are endlessly fascinating.
There’s also four alternate endings (unavailable for screening), the usual audio features and a music video for DeVotchKa’s “Till the End of Time.” The eclectic Denver-based act won widespread acclaim with its bittersweet songs, which account for much of the score. Composer and collaborator Mychael Danna helped strip down themes from their album “How It Ends” and sprinkled them onto the film’s weightier moments.
“We were looking for music that felt like this oddball collection of characters,” said co-director Faris in the press materials. “What’s really hard is to bring out the humor, without the music itself being ‘humorous,’ and this seemed to really work.”
Considering the soundtrack’s – and the film’s – likelihood of snagging an Oscar nomination next month, most audiences and critics seem to agree.
Staff writer John Wenzel can be reached at 303-954-1642 or jwenzel@denverpost.com.
