Little Miss Sunshine

[Drunk Monk]

The Chron gave this a jumping-out-of-the-chair man, but I think it was because Steve Carrell plays a suicidal gay Proust scholar. Steve's funny. I love him in the Office. Alan Arkin is funny in this too. He says 'fuck' a lot and he says it with gusto. The film starts out funny, sort of a quirkly-dysfunctional-road-trip movie, but it loses speed around the middle and the rest is mediocre. Decent performances and all, but it fails to deliver in the end. If you're really interested, save this one for rental; it's not a big screen experience by any means. I'd only give it a sitting-up man at best.

[The Queen]

We did save this for DVD-rental and it wasn't worth watching via rental, either. I was very disappointed. I'd heard from so many people that this was good, so I was expecting SOMETHING. I'm really surprised it got a Best Picture Oscar nomination, especially as Dreamgirls was a hell of a lot better. A lot of movies from last year were a lot better than this one.

The only thing I really liked was the silent Nietzsche-reading teen pilot wanna-be and his interaction with Steve Carell's character and with his little sister -- that worked pretty well. (And after all, Nietzsche is Pietzsche. At least that's what I read on a t-shirt.)

But mostly I just wanted to shoot Greg Kinnear and put him out of my misery.

[El Dingo]

I have to agree.

It tries to be 'American Beauty' and 'Arrested Development' but ends up just being a wank-fest for method actors.

I thought the ending was brilliant though (I hate those 'baby pageant' things with a passion).

[King Bob]

Maybe it's boring to just all agree, but it just wasn't very good. It also got ridiculously implausible. Alan Arkin was the best part, so when he left it went downhill.

I wasn't sure what they were trying to say (if they knew) - were they mocking these losers or celebrating them? The people I know who really liked it seemed to take it as mockery, which made me think less of those people.