LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE (2006) **1/2 I think I like it as a cry against conformity more than as a film. It's a wonderful cry against conformity in its many stultifying forms, not least in cinema. I really like it as a cry against conformity. On the other hand you can't have the scenes that I really like without the ones that didn't inspire me as much. If you did, for example, you would just have good untethered scenes flying all over the place, and the only cries would be for someone to catch them and bring them back. So leave them where they are, that's what I say, leave them alone. Let them be. Let them express themselves as they do. That being said, I see very little Nietzschean about the film (which is, admittedly, in a way, a relief I guess). The leading characters are lunatics, as has been observed, but scattered and smeared across our own cultural backdrop they become sympathetic, their irregularities all but inevitable, and their persistences (to varying degrees) admirable. They're still all nuttier than the little girl who just wants to win a beauty pageant, though, which is a point: our nuttiness starts out (relatively) benign. A corollary, perhaps, is that we should be impressed with those who attain only a minor nuttiness….nah!!!
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