Little Miss Suckshine

The Oscars went down Sunday night too late to note winners as of this writing, but that is irrelevant for my purposes here.

The mere fact that Little Miss Sunshine was nominated for Best Picture is laughable. This movie might be the most over-rated piece of fluff since the snore inducing “The Full Monty”.

I had heard all the hype about this movie, and my mother (god bless her) added to it, by SHOVING the DVD in my hands a few weeks ago with the urgent mission of “you HAVE to watch this!”

Okay.

So I did.

And right after it was over, I went immediately to the internet, to see if somebody, ANYBODY thought the same thing I did. Namely: what the f?

Look, it’s not a bad movie. It is cute, and has a moment or two. But BEST F’IN PICTURE! Get a grip! And Alan Arkin for SUPPORTING ACTOR? Um, don’t you actually have to be more than a DEAD BODY in the movie to win this award?

Arkin has once decent SCENE in this movie, and that’s it. If I were another actor up for the award, I’d be muttering up a blue streak in the green room just thinking about this. Arkin is great, but he was far better in something like Glengarry Glenross.

(Oops. Just updated. He won. Whatever.)

Overall, the movie features a loose collection of “characters” but certainly not good character development. The running time is too short, and the number of story threads too numerous to really dig into why the people involved are who they are.

Forget all the highly dubious elements of the movie that reduce it’s overall “believeability” to just barely possible, the movie doesn’t even get any good laughs when it goes “off-road” for ludicrous scenes.

In fact, there are parts of National Lampoon’s Vacation that are more plausible, and certainly much funnier. In fact, about half-way through LMS, struggling to stay awake, I had to remind myself: “Hey, you should pop Vacation in the ol’ DVD player again someday.”

No doubt, you have probably heard that this movie was an independent, filmed in like a month, with a budget of like $50,000. Yeah, so what? If a major studio had put out LMS, spent $20 million on it, and marketed it normally, would it have ANY chance of Best Picture?

Hell no.

The Academy just loves the indie-angle and the fact it’s a non-studio release that did well at Sundance. At the end of the day, however, all of this business backround to the movie won’t make it any better when you watch it.

If you loved LMS and think I missed the boat on why it was GREAT, fine. I’m all ears. But I know I can’t be the ONLY one who thought the same thing.

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AND NOW YOUR PIC O' THE DAY!

Can you find "Miss Minnesota" in this bikini contest?