I'm not a fan of independent films, especially cloyingly artsy-fartsy ones like this. There are some chuckles to be had, but the little girl is nearly pushed out of the picture by her dysfunctional family, and the movie just sort of petered out at the end without finality.

Motivation husband, depressed teenager, coke sniffing grandad, frumpy kid, and a uncle that tried to kill himself, with these charactors stuck in a VW van for a 800 mile journey it sounds like a great idea for a movie, WRONG!!! I can see why some people may find this a good film but for me it felt that the film just didn't go anywhere. Personally if you want a film that captures the plain goofyness of various charactors then I suggest watching Napolean Dynamite.… Expand

I am stunned this movie was nominated for best picture. I don

I wanted to like this movie, I really did. The film is not bad, yet it is terribly overrated. It kept my eyes pointed toward the screen, but not much more. The characters are very much "end of the spectrum" types: the motivational speaker dad is extra anal about motivation, the angst-filled teenager is extra angsty, etc. etc. I waited for the meaningful moments, the lessons about life to show up, but they stayed home. This film is rather predictable and bland from beginning to end, which I found to be surprising, given how promising it looked from the trailer. This film getting a best picture nomination by the "Academy" really pushes home the message that there must be back-scratching and such favors going on when it comes time to pick nominees. Again, it's not bad, just a rather generic ups-and-downs dysfunctional family film with a fuzzy happy ending.… Expand

Although I a lot of craft went into this. It was all in the name of manipulating the audience. [***SPOILERS***]The faux-iconography of the dysfunctional family traveling in a VW minivan was pathetic and embarrassing. Characters with whom we should apparently be sympathizing (i.e. Dwayne and Frank) are relegated to the film's narrative periphery very early on. Even My Big Fat Greek Wedding was more "indie" than this. What use is this film to anybody PAYING to see it?… Expand

Mystifyingly bad. Oh, how I wanted to like it. Cliched characters assembled on a screenwriters factory line, with nary a breath of life in them (save Breslin, lovable without ever being cloying), a plot creakingly contrived from start to finish. Not one moment of this film rang true (ok, one - the sweet scene where Alan Arkin's 'foulmouthed grandpa' - i imagine this is what he was dubbed in the screenplay - assures Breslin's wannabe beauty queen that she is beautiful. Really - and this is the film at its most touching.), nevermind tickled the funny bone. Replete with gaping holes in character motivation/ development you could drive a truck through (the son wants to be a fighter pilot, so he took a vow of silence. This leads us conveniently to 'funny,' furious scribbling in a notepad, ' i hate everyone'. Teenage angst has never been so subtle!). Even the supposedly laugh-out loud finale felt heavy-handed and like a desperate, mean, and inexplicable ploy for laughs. Finally, it just felt so slight - at film's end, a great big shrug is all I could muster.… Expand

Okay. What we've got here is an R rated comedy about a young girl named Olive entering a beauty padgent. To do that her family need to take a little road trip. This shouldn't be a comedy first of all because there's barely any comedy. It's more like drama. But this movie is so stupid and pointless. The son won't talk because he took a vow of silence. He took a vow of silence because he wants to be a pilot. It doesn't make much sense. The uncle is a homosexual man who tried to kill himself because he didn't get the guy he wanted. The grandpa is an annoying person who takes drugs and swares a lot. The father is so annoying. The mom is probobly one of the only normal people in the family. The story line was so bad. They take some 1 and a half day roadtrip to a beauty pagant. It didn't take an intelligent guy to write the script. BORING! STUPID! DON'T GET IT!!! OR RENT IT!… Expand

Little Miss Sunshine just wasn't funny enough to compensate for its straightforward, predictable plot. The only redeeming quality of this film was that the character development was well done. Basically, I am amazed that this movie got a nomination for best picture.

While it's obvious many people feel this movie succeeds in its humorous antics, I can only find myself cringing. This is one of those films that's all about personal taste, my palete having grown accustomed to a decidedly different sort of entertainment. I can say with certainty, however, that awarding it with Best Picture would have been similar to awarding the Nobel Prize to the individual who invented the Slap Chop: both amusing and utterly ridiculous.… Expand

Predictable plot line, and one dimensional characters. Over-hyped, under-stuffed.

Many reviewers have compared Little Miss Sunshine to National Lampoon's Family Vacation, usually tacking on "with heart," or "with soul," or "with humanity." It's easy to understand why - in both films, a family takes a road trip laden with comic foibles to a destination that comes to be imbued with an almost mythic importance. The difference, the "soul" or "heart" that people tack on to Little Miss Sunshine, is that the audience is supposed to sympathize with the Hoovers, rather than simply accepting them as comedy drones a la the Griswolds. The problem is that there's really very little reason to do so. They are caricatures, and often mean and unpleasant ones, at that. Like Sideways, it peddles this unpleasantness as character depth and asks us to like these people almost entirely because they're unlikable. When they overcome, or at least try to address, their flaws, it usually feels more like plot contrivance than any kind of real effort or epiphany, and the whole ends up feeling cheap and flimsy. Don't get me wrong - I don't believe that all characters have to be likable or kind, and I certainly don't think they should ever be flawless, but I have a problem with being asked to feel warmth toward a collection of jerks simply for their comic mishaps. The film's most enjoyable moments and most likable characters come from Steve Carell and Paul Dano, who are unfortunately sidelined most of the time. The finale that so many have called "outrageous" and "heartwarming" felt exploitative, implausible, and more than a little mean - in other words, a micro version of the entire film. With the Griswolds, the audience knew all along they were being given caricature - broad, ridiculous characters in wacky situations. It didn't matter if we liked them or not - we were just along for a very foolish ride. Little Miss Sunshine's Hoovers are supposed to be more "real," but end up just being irritating and unfunny.… Expand

Enoumously overrated movie. Typically "quirky character ensemble" that the chumps at Sundance regularly swoon for. Totally diconnected when it comes to the relationships between the characters, and to the incidents in the story.

Incredibly overrated. Critics love these quirky independent films. I think they are so starved for good movies they overreact to anything different. Not very funny and not very insightful.

Watching this movie is the cinematic equivalent of spend 100 minutes with the most irritating people on Earth. The humor is overly camp and the gimmicks are lowbrow and extraordinarily unentertaining.

Relatively entertaining, but forced. Most of the characters were written with the depth of a 2nd rate sitcom (the brooding teen boy, the grumpy but lovable grandfather, the lovable misfit daughter, the bumbling but lovable father, the troubled but lovable uncle who also happens to be the token "indy" film gay guy, the hardworking mother who's the core of the family), but were reasonable well acted, considering how lame some of the writing is. Nothing here you haven't seen before.… Expand

I don't get it. Clichéd to absurdity, this movie is as pointless as Napolean Dynamite, but without the wit. This is more of a "put 6 strong characters in a blender", and "hilariousness ensues". Unfortunately, the jokes are predictable and lack depth. A few gags had some fun in them, but Gramps doing homo jokes doesn't excite me. Maybe when I was 14, but not anymore.

i hate this movie. wow, the family is a bunch of fucked-up losers! they have quirks! how HONEST and REAL. how about trite? plus, the message of the film lacked any subtlety or nuance, a staple of today's lackluster cinema. it's just in-your-face, film-as-prozac film-making at it's... best? yes, the girl is very cute and does an excellent job in her role. but i especially hated alan arkin's performance and character. ooh, this grandpa is so badass, he doesn't give a fuck, and he curses and talks about having sex and shoots smack. that's really hilarious and profound. i am not surprised that mr. arkin won an oscar because his role is typical academy fodder: bullshit. it reminds me of why i also hated american beauty. suburban angst, nuclear family dysfunction, broken (american) dreams... that's all fine subject matter, but if that's your interest, you're better off seeing Little Children or Happiness, because little miss sunshine, like crash, affects genuine feeling, but, really, just bashes your skull in with its cloying sentimentality.… Expand

The only reason I sat thru this film was to see as much of Alan Arkin as possible. Yes, everything was funny, but just too much. Best

Just because you leave the theater with a smile on your face doesn't mean it's a good movie. It means you like to see awkward little girls prosper and enjoy their childhood. Who doesn't? But everything leading up to these few minutes of Breslin enjoyment are painful to sit through and show no signs of humor at all. A for effort from Abigail but everything else failed miserably.

Little Missed Opportunity. Great cast, good music, God-awful script and directing. [***SPOILERS***] Often I felt bored waiting for the characters to do what was obviously going to happen, eg. everyone must take trip, body out of hospital, whereas motorcycle journey and confronting agent serves no purpose whatsoever. Poorly crafted. Recovery from grandpa's death happened awfully quickly! How did mom have no clue what her daughter was wearing? How did dad the schmo instantly turn into Mr. Good Guy? Character development is not the same as plot-convenient transformation.… Expand

Pretends to rock a million boats but at its core, Little Miss Sunshine is soft as caramel. It allows the shallow among us to laugh at "all those other people with problems" while never acknowledging that sentimentality is the enemy of satire. Barely rises above the level of flaccid sitcom writing. It gets a "2" for its cast, among whom Alan Arkin is the true standout.

Lame, Reminded me of a high school play. The great Toni Collette was completely wasted.

Predictable, cheap, condescending, and hollow. The characters are paper-thin, embodying weird idiosyncratic mannerisms instead of developing into actual, somewhat believable "people;" the script is flat-out awful, poking fun at the misfortunes of the characters at every opportunity; and while the acting is decent provided the material, nobody could save this movie from itself. Little Miss Sunshine is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a good (or even decent!) film -- let alone something that gets nominated for Best Picture. Don't believe the hype.… Expand

There was little humor in this film, in my opinion. I'm all for suspending some disbelief, but how did the daughter's "talent presentation" qualify her for some regional pageant? And how am I supposed to warm up to a family where the parents are so unbelievably (literal use here--I couldn't believe it for a second) that they left her in the hands of the vulgar and inappropriate grandfather, or that they failed to shut the old coot up or even react to his profane rants? If that's a "best picture" candidate, somebody hand me a novel -- quick.… Expand

Overated!!! Read David G's review below, exactly what I was saying to myself. Nice little moments with a very embarrasing ending. Do not be fooled by the hype around this " indy" film.

In no way was this a comedy. The only art that was humorous was the very end. It is not worth struggling though just to get to that point. When it was over both my girlfriend and I looked at each other and asked how could this get good reviews. Sometimes methinks that people give good reviews to lousy movies jsut so they can think they are semi-intelligent or highbrow. Watch ANY movie but this.

Your typical dysfunctional family on the treadmill to nowhere. A few chuckles but not much else. Tons of problems, everything goes wrong. In the end, still tons of problems everyone loves everyone.

This acting was good, but the movie feel so fake even it is supposed to be silly comedy to make some points. Every funny plots are so forced that I feel the writers and the director are not very serious about their work. It is the most over rated movie this year if not longer. If this movie gets the nomination for Oscar, I will really going to puke...

Although the movie has some good points, there was too much shouting, and the ending was very poor.

It should be called a little piece of garbage. The characters are unappealing and classless add on top they were annoying. No idea why the grandfather won supporting actor. The story wasn't interesting at all and wasn't funny.

Just how did this made-for-TV movie make it into theaters? If I make a video of my fat little sister dancing in front of a televised beauty pageant with my cliched grandparent swearing in the background, can I go to Sundance too?

Tremendously overrated. Artsy and cute but nothing more. NOT fulfilling in the least.

I understand that the story tells about all the troubles this broken family goes through, but I just didn't know what point the movie was trying to make. They callled it comedy, but there wasn't really anything to laugh about. In fact, the end comes quite suddenly, it doesns't even have a scene that reconciles the entire situation and puts the family back into one piece. I just don't get it.… Expand

It's rubbish, nothing about it is funny, its just 6 losers with sad boring lives, even when i think about them it makes me depressed. the characters are shallow and the individuals stories are boring and the me against the world attitude of this film is a big steaming pile of the brown stuff!!

After being forced into seeing The 40-Year-Old Virgin, I was sure that I would not see a worse movie for the next fifteen years. Unfortunately the same person who dragged me into The 40-Year-Old Virgin talked me into giving Little Miss Sunshine a chance, so I did. Those fifteen years I gave myself to see a worse movie quickly changed to little under a year. An embarassing effort from Dayton and company. Painful to sit through and humorless.… Expand

highly over-rated

If you liked Sideways, you'll like this movie. The movie did make me laugh out loud once or twice, which I suppose would lead some to believe I enjoyed it. However, it was more or less the same laugh I get watching America's Funniest Home Videos where the little kid whacks the father in the nuts with a plastic bat. These characters are under-developed and uninteresting. They9;ve tried to find the freakiest combination of liberals possible. Drug-addicted foul mouthed grandfather who ends up dieing mid-road trip and gets lugged along (You've seen this movie before, it was National Lampoon's Vacation which I'd give 9 out of 10). The son who doesn't speak until he realizes he can't become a military pilot. But he's 15 which means he's in school, right? How do you get through school without talking? The brother-in-law is gay and suicidal and explains exactly why he's suicidal to the daughter at the dinner table. Seems like a loser to me. The mother has absolutely no interest in what the grandfather is teaching her to do at the Little Miss Sunshine contest and also, evidently, has never been to a competition. Way to go mom. Finally, the father is trying to be a "self-help" guru but hasn't tried a single one of his step on his OWN FAMILY! He doesn't deserve to succeed since he lives with the biggest bunch of rag-tag morons on the planet! This movie was awful. I didn't like the characters, I didn't identify with the characters, I didn't care about the characters. They all deserved to fail...and they did.… Expand

That was a pretty bad movie. Humor is overly camp and it was a waste of time. Straightforward and predictable, I am surprised they even got nominated for any awards.

Horrible ! The movie depends on curse words, drug addiction and freaks that are supposingly portraying an American family....A dark comedy and critics loved it ? Excuse me ? I weep for the future .... A waste of time. Period.

HORRIBLE. Forced story line, cliche...junk!

I didn't think mainstream indie comedies could be worse than "Garden State". Boy was I wrong.

I don't understand how people could give this movie a 9 or 10? It's just plan bad! Read Happy Killmore he's right on the money about this stinker. Bad is bad and this movie is bad!

Possibly the worst movie I have ever seen. Shocked at all the good reviews. Never cracked a smile once neither did the other 3 people I saw it with. Awful.

Wow. I'm stunned. Every once in a while a movie comes along that is jaw-droppingly horrible to the point that it leaves your mouth hanging open. I lack sufficient terms to express how trite and repellent I find this simpering movie. It's an exhausted "human spirit" movie so cloying that it needs to be taken off life support. From the first time I saw the TV commercial which featured the hackneyed ruse of getting the whole family in one vehicle for the duration of a movie, I suspected the script would have difficulty making that premise believable. It certainly fails there, but that's the least of its problems. But still, the wealth of good reviews drew me to buy a ticket. My initial reservations were right. This script is an inept piece of garbage long before you evaluate it on moral grounds, where it collapses spectacularly. The family here is a mix of characters so drippy and dense that they never realize their dumpy, uncoordinated, bespectacled daughter isn't the Junior Miss type. It takes them exactly one pageant (following a needless cross country trip) to figure that out. The same family doesn't realize that a heroin-snorting, horndog grandfather shouldn't be the one teaching their adolescent daughter her beauty pageant dance number. Why not go all the way and include a "funny scene" of grandpa molesting her? The setup is practically there; a scene so distasteful feels like it's just off-screen (or on the cutting room floor) in this wholly objectionable movie. Long after a ridiculously unbelievable "chance meeting" in a gas station, long after paper-deep villains have been thrown at the screen, long after the annoying Murphy's Law plot line is exhausted, comes the most sick, saccharine, crappy moment in all of film history which involves a family attempting to redeem their seven-year old daughters failed, inappropriate talent routine (a strip tease) by joining her on stage. Sexualizing a seven year old girl without her being developmentally able to understand it... mmm, that's comedy gold. This "edgy material" is about as palatable as a cup of bleach. I'm not one to look for messages but here we've got something like "Let's all support each other as we swim up the cr*p river of life!" I'm sure it's supporters think I've missed the point and that the humor is just dark. It's not dark. Making a dark comedy is an art. This comedy has no edge in it's delivery. It's filmed straight. It's acted and presented ineptly. It's about as edgy as a smutty episode of Seventh Heaven. This is the rotten family-values homily to end them all. Drawing big saccharine payoffs to support a family values theme also places this squarely in mainstream whitebread entertainment. It makes perfect sense that idiotic Hollywood would nominate this tripe for a bunch of Oscars, but I can't believe I respect people who like this atrocity. The Oscars have become so gratingly self-impressed, and the nominees so limp, that all you can really do anymore is root against films you don't want to have any further influence on the culture. I am so glad it lost the Best Picture award ; Now it starts a long descent to the bottom of time's toilet, exactly where it belongs, where it will be forgotten.… Expand

How about putting this in bold font across the top of the DVD box, "The Most Overrated Film of the Decade." Look I know a good movie when I see one and never let the hype get to me. I thought Sideways and Lost in Translation were well deserving of their praise when they came out and were nominated for Best Picture but this was a joke. Let's go over a few of the stand-out scenes **Spoiler**: Alan Arkin uses countless expletives for no reason at all until he finally dies, Carell mispronounces Proust about fifteen times, Paul Dano mopes around for two hours then turns into the grandfather and curses uncontrollably for no reason, and finally the movie climaxes with a so-quirky-she's-cute kid stripping in a beauty pageant. Chevy Chase must be rolling in his grave right now thinking about this poor attempt at remaking his comedy classic. And can we talk about Steve Carell's underacting? It seems he went into a coma sometime around the start of production and hasn't come out of character since. You can watch his eyes in the film carefully read over the cue cards off screen while trying not to fall asleep.… Collapse

I felt totally conned by this movie. I can just imagine the Fox poeple at Sundance thinking, "Those arty blue-staters LOVE quirky indie comedies like this, with their ironically suburban aesthetics and implausible motel sets that mimic 'Wallpaper' spreads from 1999!" The script was total garbage; I could hear its rusty gears creaking throughout, especially during the exposition scenes when the writer had to contrive a way for the entire family to agree to take the road trip. I think Little Miss Sunshine might be my least favorite movie of all time. No doubt it will win best original screenplay at this year's Oscars.… Expand

This movie is wretched. The characters are unappealing and classless. I couldn't root for any of them. Just gross. Who would let their kid act in this junk?

They tricked me, and stole my money.

Awful!

I had to vote cause I thought the movie stank! I walked out of the film before the old man died--probably only the second or third film I've ever walked out of. This film Did Not Work! "Harold and maude" (a quirky independent film about disfunctional folks) worked. This film did not! It's absolutely pathetic it's been nominated for anything. Ensemble? Please. Thank God Altman (the great ensemble director) is dead. It's a sham. I thought it was big in Santa Cruz because someone local was a director (or something). I suppose when "Crash" beat out "Good Night and Good Luck" last year it was time to give it all a rest. The little was cute--let's hope her career lives through this experience.… Expand

when the movie ended, i immediatly packed it up and sold it to the local Game Stop......i had to get this peice of crap out of my home

Funny but clichéd. This is one shitty fucking "indie" flick.

horrible, simply horrible, it had the wit of an elementary schooler, and the filth of a pervert

Everything a movie shouldn't be. Nick Lachey should be ashamed of himself for writing such garbage. No wonder he used a pseudonym.

Will someone please explain the appeal of this movie? Look just because you have the classic quirky formula of cute glasses wearing kid, drug addicted grandfather and bearded depressed character doesnt mean it's good. It means this film arrived ten years too late. We've seen it all before, get over it critics. We only need one Wes Anderson.

We walked out!

Reading the reviews for this flick are making me sick. Zach Braff is to blame for all of this. He makes a film like 'Garden State' and suddenly everyone hopes aboard the quirky train and hundreds of these teenage-marketed films come out. Winter Passing, Life Aquatic, Thumbsucker, Elizabethtown, will it ever end? Since when is a $40 million dollar studio film starring eight accomplished actors considered indie? The worst of the worst.… Expand

im sorry, i just cannot understand the huge attraction to this movie. there was maybe one or two funny moments, but that was it....the jokes were stupid, and the whole thing was boring....at the end it seemed like they would end the movie with a good message, but then the movie disappointed me again, it couldnt even end on a good note....I WANT MY MONEY BACK!