Stubs - The Devil Wears Prada

The Devil Wears Prada (2006) starring Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Stanley Tucci, Emily Blunt, Simon Baker. Directed by David Frankel. Screenplay by Aline Brosh McKenna. Based on The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger.  Produced by Wendy Finerman. Run time: 109 minutes. Color. USA. Comedy, Drama

Lauren Weisberger was 26 when she turned her experience as an assistant to Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour into a book. The best-selling novel, The Devil Wears Prada, spent six months on New York Times's bestseller list. Fox bought the rights to the novel even before it was finished. Carla Hacken, then the studio's executive vice president, had only seen the first hundred pages of the manuscript and an outline for the rest of the plot.

As is common practice in Hollywood, four screenwriters worked on the property. Peter Hedges wrote the first draft; another writer passed. Paul Rudnick did some work on Miranda's scenes, followed by a Don Roos rewrite. Aline Brosh McKenna produced a draft that struck a balance for Finerman and Frankel, whose notes were incorporated into a final version, rearranging the plot significantly, and focusing the story on the conflict between Andy and Miranda.

Meryl Streep was not the first choice for Miranda. She was initially not considered because no one knew she could be funny. Before her, Michelle Pfeiffer, Glenn Close, and Catherine Zeta-Jones were considered before her. Signing Streep allowed Fox to greenlight the project.

Star Fox Command

Following the release of Star Fox: Assault (Assault) on the GameCube, a new Star Fox game, Star Fox Command (Command), was developed for Nintendo’s then-new DS system and released early in the system’s life cycle. Admittedly, I didn’t have much interest in this game at first, but I ended up investing in a physical copy, partly to fill the unsightly gap in my Star Fox collection after realizing it was the only game I didn’t own in any capacity and partly to complete my experience with the timeline started by Star Fox 64 (64). Rather notably, said timeline represents a more experimental era in Star Fox history, with each subsequent game after 64 attempting to bring something new to the table to stand out. In the case of Command, its most notable feature is its use of multiple endings, as well as a unique control scheme based around the DS touchscreen, making it stand out from even the radically different Star Fox Adventures (Adventures) and Assault. While these are interesting ideas in theory, the end result unfortunately falls a little short in practice.

Mission: Impossible III

Note: This review contains spoilers for Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.

Despite the mixed reception to Mission Impossible 2 (M:i-2), its success would lead to a sequel, Mission: Impossible III (M:i:III). Production got off to a rocky start with the search for a director, that is until Tom Cruise suggested J. J. Abrams after binge-watching two seasons of Alias. After some initial production delays, the final release in May 2006 garnered greater critical reception and became the eighth-highest grossing film of 2006. Unfortunately, it still proved a financial failure against its budget of ~$150 million and has the (dis)honor of its place as the lowest-grossing film in the entire franchise and hurting Tom Cruise’s career until Ghost Protocol revived it. Looking at the film now, it’s a shame that it didn’t do well, as it is an improvement on its predecessors, but I wouldn’t consider it my favorite either.

Jaws Unleashed (PS2)

Although the 1975 film Jaws has had a lasting impact on pop culture (for better or worse), the film has had a number of product tie-ins over the decades, including in the video game space. While a handful of home console games exist, one that had caught my interest in particular was the 2006 game Jaws Unleashed, as while I wasn’t quite old enough to actually play it at the time, the idea of playing as the shark had always intrigued me, in spite of its reception. In the years since, I was reminded of this game by the existence of the game Maneater, which features a similar concept, and was recently lucky enough to find a wild PS2 copy of Jaws Unleashed. While I had been wanting to play the game anyway, this year being the 50^th anniversary of the original film provided motivation to finally boot it up for the first time. Although I found the expansion on the Jaws world interesting, the game unfortunately shows some age with the flawed execution of its gameplay.

Paprika (2006)

Note: this review contains spoilers for Paprika.

Though Satoshi Kon may have passed before his prime, his films serve as a testament to the power of animation to blend dreams with reality. His final film, Paprika, based on Yasutaka Tsutsui’s 1993 novel of the same name, takes this idea to its logical conclusion, even making it a central plot point. Though watching the English dub of Kon’s series Paranoia Agent spurred me to seek out his filmography, one point of interest with Paprika in particular was seeing that the Christopher Nolan film Inception had been compared with it, though it had been years since I had seen Inception, so I was able to view Paprika on its own merits. After watching Paprika through an English dub on Blu-ray, it’s safe to say that Satoshi Kon’s cinematic career ended on a high note.

Stubs - X-Men: The Last Stand

 

X-Men: The Last Stand aka X-Men III (2006) starring: Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Ian McKellen. Directed by Brett Ratner. Screenplay by Simon Kinberg, Zak Penn Based on the comic book series X-Men created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Produced by Lauren Shuler Donner, Ralph Winter, Avi Arad Run time: 104 minutes. Color. United Kingdom, United States. Adventure, Science Fiction

Following the success of X2 (2003), it seemed only natural that there would be a third film in the series. However, the director of the previous two films wasn’t all that interested in pursuing it. Singer stated that he "didn't fully have X-Men 3 in my mind" and was more interested in making the next Superman film, Superman Returns (2006) at Warner Bros.

Finding a replacement was not easy. Hugh Jackman's contract included the approval of director, and the job was offered to Darren Aronofsky, with whom he had just finished filming on The Fountain (2006). But Aronofsky was not the last person to be offered the position. Joss Whedon, Rob Bowman, Alex Proyas, Zack Snyder, Peter Berg, and Guillermo del Toro were all approached, but had other projects that kept them from taking the job.

In February 2005, even without a director, Fox announced the film’s release date (May 5, 2006) and that production would start in July 2005. A month later, it was announced that Matthew Vaughn had been secured to direct, but family issues would force him to resign from the project. Apparently, Vaughn also wasn’t happy about the tight deadlines imposed by Fox, stating that he "didn't have the time to make the movie that I wanted to make".

Silent Hill (Film)

If there’s one part of the Silent Hill franchise that a more mainstream audience would recognize, it’s the 2006 movie directed by Christophe Gans. Though thrashed by critics on release, it did get better reception from general audiences and I felt curious enough to watch it myself after playing Silent Hill, especially since I found a free TV airing through Starz Encore. After doing so, I think that Silent Hill is an overlooked example of a good video game movie, but it does drag in places for one specific reason.

Destroy All Humans! 2 (Xbox)

Following the success of the original release of Destroy All Humans! in 2005, developer Pandemic Studios released a follow-up in 2006, Destroy All Humans! 2. Much like the original game, I distinctly remember seeing this game in store displays, including a playable demo, and while I never played it, the name stuck with me. In my hype for the Destroy All Humans! remake, I bought a copy of Destroy All Humans! 2 on the original Xbox, not knowing if a remake of that game was in the works or not. Indeed, a remake of this game was announced as Destroy All Humans! 2: Reprobed, which made me realize I was in a unique position to compare the original release to the remake, since I went into the original game’s remake blind. Playing this game immediately following Destroy All Humans! (2020) is an interesting experience in itself, and while I liked it on a gameplay level, I had mixed feelings on it from a storytelling perspective.

Monster House

In 2004, Robert Zemeckis’ ImageWorks began experimenting in motion capture animation with The Polar Express, which, despite uncanny valley criticisms, managed to do well enough for another film, Monster House, to be animated with the same technology in 2006. Though I had seen Monster House as a kid when it came out and liked it, I hadn’t really seen it since then, deciding to revisit it again nearly two decades later to see how well it holds up. Though the visuals are a little dated, it manages to hold up surprisingly well as a decent, timeless horror film.

Stubs - Casino Royale (2006)

Casino Royale (2006): Starring: Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Mads Mikkelsen, Jeffrey Wright, Judi Dench. Directed by Martin Campbell. Produced by Michael G. Wilson, Barbara Broccoli. Screenplay by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, Paul Haggis Based on the novel Casino Royale by Ian Fleming (London, 1953).Run Time: 148 min. Color, Germany, Czech Republic, Great Britain, and United States. Espionage, Drama, Action, Adventure

In 2006, after 22 films (counting two non-Eon produced films) and 40 years, the James Bond franchise did something it hadn’t done before, rebooted. Having run through all the Bond novels by 1995, GoldenEye is not based on a novel by Ian Fleming; it was time for something to happen.

Pierce Brosnan, the fifth actor to play Bond had retired from the franchise after four films: GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), The World Is Not Enough (1999) and Die Another Day (2002). Brosnan had helped to bring the franchise back from the dead, after a six-year hiatus. He knew that it was time for him to move on, which left a void.

Daniel Craig got the role after a search for an actor to play the iconic character. The Bond character is in many ways a relic of the Cold War and while each film up until now had built on the preceding one, the decision was made to update the franchise, change the timeline and, more importantly, to reboot.

Cars

Note: The review contains spoilers for Cars.

When you start off good and you’ve been practicing your craft long enough, you are likely to have at least one weak point somewhere in your career. In the case of Pixar, their first arguably weak movie in their catalog was the original Cars film in 2006. When I saw the first trailer in front of The Incredibles in a theater, I will admit the concept of basing a movie around a world of anthropomorphic vehicles was baffling to me, however I watched it anyway out of my loyalty to Pixar, finding it surprisingly average for them at the time and their weakest film until Cars 2 came out in 2011. In the 15 years since, I have only watched Cars again sparingly, however I recently decided to give it a closer look to see how well it held up when compared to its sequels. Though I generally enjoyed it, it’s still not exactly one of Pixar’s better movies.

Hitman: Blood Money (Xbox)

Among the original Hitman games, Hitman: Blood Money is usually considered the best one by both critics and players due to how much it advanced the series’ gameplay. Blood Money’s gameplay remained so iconic, in fact, that the World of Assassination Trilogy took what that game did and refined it even further until Hitman 3 arguably topped it. Although the game was available on the Xbox 360 at launch, I ended up playing it directly after Contracts through the lesser-known Xbox version, which still gave me a good idea of why Blood Money had developed such a reputation. In fact, considering the lengthy development period, which included releasing Contracts to buy more time, I actually agree with it, even if it feels just a little clunky.

Resistance: Fall of Man

With the launch of the PlayStation 3 on the horizon, Insomniac Games, Sucker Punch and Naughty Dog, three high-profile developers for the PS2, collectively and independently decided to use the new system as an opportunity to diversify their portfolios away from mascot platformers and introduce an original IP that aimed for a realistic art style to take advantage of the system’s capabilities. In Insomniac’s case, their follow-up to the Ratchet & Clank series was Resistance: Fall of Man, a launch title for the PS3 and their first FPS since their first ever game Disruptor on the PS1. With this year being the 15^th anniversary of the PS3 as well as Resistance: Fall of Man, in addition to general pandemic boredom, I decided it would be the perfect opportunity to play it for the first time to see how well it held up, after managing to find a physical copy at a local retro game store. While time hasn’t been too kind to it in places, the game did manage to surprise me with its interesting ideas.

Sneak King

Of the three Burger King advergames, Sneak King is perhaps the best-known and the most infamous. It’s the only game to not feature any vehicle-based elements and has only one playable character, the King. However, its stealth gameplay is what draws more attention to it, as it does nothing to help the inherent creepiness of the mascot. When I previously played this game, I didn’t manage to get very far due to what I perceive in hindsight to be a lack of skill, so I decided to give it more of a chance after revisiting Big Bumpin’ and Pocketbike Racer. While Sneak King still doesn’t rank very high on the video game totem pole, I found the gameplay to be surprisingly decent for what it was.

Pocketbike Racer

Alongside Big Bumpin’ and Sneak King, Pocketbike Racer is one of three advergames for Xbox and Xbox 360 that were once offered as an extra with the purchase of a Burger King Value Meal, though I would not actually play any of them until I found them for cheap secondhand. When I first played Pocketbike Racer, I didn’t spend very much time on it due to what seemed like a lack of content, though I recently decided to take a look back on it to see if I had missed anything. Upon closer inspection, there is a little more to it than I remembered, however it didn’t change the fact that it was a mildly ambitious racing game on paper, though a bit unpolished in practice.

Big Bumpin'

Even for a fast food company, Burger King has had its fair share of rather bizarre marketing campaigns, most infamously their on-and-off King mascot. In late 2006, one of these campaigns involved selling a series of three Xbox and Xbox 360 compatible games as $3.99 add-ons to a value meal, those being Big Bumpin’, Pocketbike Racer and Sneak King. While I didn’t get any of these games during the campaign’s initial run, in part because I didn’t own either of Microsoft’s home consoles at the time, I did go out of my way to find them for cheap around the time I actually got an Xbox system. While I did briefly play them then, I recently decided to revisit them to see if I had actually seen everything in those games, beginning with Big Bumpin’. Even after some time had passed, it was just as unremarkable as I remembered.

Tony Hawk's Project 8 (PS3)

After the release of Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland in 2005, a new game known as Tony Hawk’s Project 8 came out the following year, however it would also be the first one released on the then-new PlayStation 3, as a launch title for the system. Around this time, the Pro Skater series also took more of a shift towards realism, seemingly as a way to take advantage of the next generation of hardware. While the effort put into the title was certainly ambitious, I found it rather disappointing, both on its own merits and especially in comparison to previous games in the series.

Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII

Note: This review contains spoilers for Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII

As part of my journey through Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, the next stop after Advent Children was Dirge of Cerberus, a sequel/spinoff game that puts Vincent Valentine directly into the spotlight. Oddly enough, this also happened to be the only piece of Final Fantasy VII media I didn’t own, likely due to its negative reception, so I borrowed a copy to reduce the investment. Now that I’ve played it for myself, it seems that its bad reputation wasn’t unearned.

Bone: Out from Boneville + The Great Cow Race

In the year 1991, independent comics creator Jeff Smith launched the first issue of Bone, a comic that ran for 55 issues until 2004 and would receive immense critical acclaim. I had been somewhat aware of this comic as far back as when I was in middle school, including seeing a wild fan art of protagonist Fone Bone as well as some of the earlier one-volume collections, however I would not get around to actually reading it until a couple years ago after buying an autographed (black-and-white) one-volume collection at Jeff Smith’s Cartoon Books booth at SDCC. I then understood the low-key hype surrounding this book and fell in love with the characters and setting, and since then have read the Bone: Coda and Tall Tales collections and the recently-released Smiley’s Dream Book, with the Rose comic prequel and Quest for the Spark novel trilogy on my radar as of this writing.

Cover for Bone #1, released July 1991
(from left: Fone Bone, Phoney Bone, Smiley Bone)

One of developer Telltale Games’ earliest works would be a series of games based on the Bone comic, starting from the beginning with Out from Boneville in 2005, shortly after the comic ended. A follow-up, The Great Cow Race, would be released in 2006, however the Bone saga in video game form would come to an ending there (incidentally, the latter game would also come right before Telltale’s first breakthrough with Sam & Max Save the World). With the recent shutdown of Telltale Games in late 2018, I recently decided to purchase the Bone duology while they were still available on the Steam store, playing both games shortly afterward for this review. Though the games were initially released as stand-alone product, I have decided to present a review of both games as one package.

After being run out of Boneville, the cousins Fone Bone, Phoney Bone and Smiley Bone discuss their current situation, with the whole thing being Phoney’s fault. Soon after the three come across a map in the middle of nowhere, the three are attacked by a swarm of locusts and end up separated, while Phone Bone ends up with the map as he starts looking for his cousins. Meanwhile, a pair of rat creatures target him as they look for Phoney.

While both the comic and the game begin similarly, the game presents a somewhat compressed version of the story that still covers the same narrative beats. Though some moments that were cut arguably contributed to world building, these moments may have come across as filler when translated to a 2-hour point-and-click game. These small moments aside, the game retains the more important events, making it easy to follow for someone unfamiliar with the source. It also prefaces the story with lore that was originally divulged much later in the comic, teasing early on what sort of story the player is experiencing.

The gameplay for Out from Boneville is pretty linear, playing more like one of those “interactive storybook” games. Certain things from the comic, such as the Bone cousins running from locusts or Fone Bone’s first encounter with the character Ted, are translated as full-on minigames, though the chase sequences can be optionally skipped after failing them once. As this was Telltale’s second game overall (their first being Telltale Texas Hold’em), the more simplistic gameplay compared with their later endeavors is more excusable here.

The graphics actually hold up pretty well, as they offer a direct translation of Jeff Smith’s art style in a 3D space. This combined with the voice acting (which includes a small JoJo's Bizarre Adventure OVA reunion) and music gave the idea that Smith’s acclaimed comic had really come to life. I especially liked the casting choices for the Bone cousins, though I would give praise to those who had voiced multiple characters at once and managed to make them all sound and feel distinct from each other. A minor gripe on the technical side of things was the occasional glitching on some characters’ heads, wherein they did not seem to know whether to look in a neutral direction or the one intended by the developers, though otherwise things went pretty smoothly.

Soon after the Bone cousins are reunited in the town of Barrelhaven, Phoney and Smiley Bone have to work off a debt at the local tavern while Fone Bone pursues his romantic feelings towards Thorn. Meanwhile, Barrelhaven is getting ready for the Cow Race, in which Gran’ma Ben races against a herd of cows. Phoney sees this as an opportunity for a quick buck, collecting bets with the promise of a “Mystery Cow” that is fast enough to outrun Gran’ma Ben.

Compared to Out from Boneville, the game manages to retell the same basic story from the comic while shuffling things around a little to suit a mechanic where you have to shuffle between Fone Bone, Phoney Bone and Smiley Bone for the majority of the game, completing certain tasks to move the plot forward and influence what happens to each character. Some small filler not present in the comic is also added in order to aid this mechanic, including the introduction of a handful of side characters not present in the source material (they do, however, still include some side characters who had a fair amount of screen time in the comic).

Despite these differences, while the story was still pretty easy to follow and hit all the major moments from the comic, I ended up having to use the in-game hint feature a bit more often in order to get through it. As The Great Cow Race came directly before Sam and Max Save the World, Telltale’s aforementioned first major hit, this acts as sort of a precursor to the increasingly-complex logic puzzles that series would go on to be known for.

I didn’t find anything wrong with the game on a technical level, though I would note certain changes in the voice cast. Most of the voice actors from the first game return here, however Wendy Tremont King, the original voice actress for both Gran’ma Ben and Thorn, was replaced with Bridgit Mendler and Susan McCollom, who voice Thorn and Gran’ma Ben respectively. The change is noticeable after playing both games back-to-back, however the two try their best to sound like King while delivering their own unique performances that improve upon what she had started.

Though among Telltale’s lesser-known work, Bone: Out from Boneville and Bone: The Great Cow Race are both enjoyable games in their own right. After having read the comic, it’s a bit disappointing that the game adaptation never got past the second arc of the story, though as they are, the two games are worth playing through for Bone fans to get a taste of how things might’ve been. For non-fans, I would also highly recommend reading the Bone comic itself, as the One-Volume Edition isn’t too hard to come by. Either way, as the fate of Telltale’s games in digital storefronts is uncertain, I would recommend picking up these games on Steam while you still can.

Stubs – Little Miss Sunshine

Little Miss Sunshine (2006) Starring: Greg Kinnear, Steve Carell, Toni Collette, Paul Dano, Abigail Breslin, Alan Arkin.  Directed by Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris.  Screenplay by Michael Arndt. Produced by Marc Turtletaub, David T. Friendly, Peter Saraf, Albert Berger, and Ron Yerxa. Run Time: 101 minutes. U.S.  Color Comedy, Drama

Take a bankrupt inspirational speaker, a gay suicidal Proust expert, a drug using foul mouthed grandfather, a silent teenager who claims to hate everyone, a slightly delusional pre-adolescent girl and a too busy to notice mother and mix them together and you have the Hoover family of Albuquerque, New Mexico and a surprisingly funny movie. Little Miss Sunshine is a road picture pretty unlike any road picture you’ve probably ever seen.

Sheryl Hoover (Toni Collette) is busy with work, but she has time to take in her suicidal brother, Frank Ginsberg (Steve Carell). The premiere Proust scholar in America, Frank is distraught after his love for a male graduate student, Josh (Justin Shilton), is unrequited and Josh ends up with Larry Sugarman (Gordon Thomson), who happens to be America’s number two Proust scholar. (Author Marcel Proust is described by Frank as having “Spent 20 years writing a book almost no one reads. But he's also probably the greatest writer since Shakespeare.”) This misadventure in love has left Frank without a job, a home or much hope. But what pushes him over the edge is when Sugarman is awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant.

Meanwhile, Sheryl’s husband, Richard (Greg Kinnear), preaches his nine steps of success to mostly empty rooms of uninspired people. A financial failure, Richard keeps preaching the importance of being a winner, even to the annoyance of his own family. Richard is obsessed through most of the film with getting a book published, a key in the marketing of any self-help guru, and is trying to get a hold of his agent, Stan Grossman (Bryan Cranston), hoping for the good word that never comes.

Frank, who can’t be left alone, is brought home to share a room with Dwayne (Paul Dano), a depressed teenager who has taken a vow of silence nine months previous. He wants to be an Air Force pilot and somehow thinks this silent treatment is going to get him there. A reader of Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher, Dwayne hates everyone, family included, and communicates through writing words and phrases down on a note pad.

Already in the mix is Richard’s father, Edwin (Alan Arkin), who got kicked out of his retirement village for snorting heroin. Edwin also snorts coke. His excuse is that he’s old and why shouldn’t he? Foul-mouthed, argumentative and dissatisfied, Edwin has taken a real shine to his grand-daughter Olive (Abigail Breslin), with whom he is working on a dance routine, should she ever need one for a beauty pageant.

Dinner at the Hoover house with (from left to right) Richard (Greg Kinnear), Olive (Abigail Breslin),
Edwin (Alan Arkin), Frank (Steve Carell), Dwayne (Paul Dano) and Sheryl (Toni Collette).

Cute, but not pretty, Olive is a chubby girl who wears glasses and her hair long and straight. Again, cute for a grade-schooler, but she has her eyes on being in beauty pageants. You might say she’s obsessed with the idea. She actually entered a local pageant for “Little Miss Sunshine” for which she finished, what I would think would be, a surprising second. As we all know from Miss America, being the first runner up is very important because if the winner can’t fulfill her duties …, well in the case of the local contest, the winner has been disqualified so now with less than forty-eight hours’ notice, Olive has to be in Redondo Beach, California for the national finals.

Olive upon hearing the news that she's in the finals of the Little Miss Sunshine pageant.

While money is a big issue, it is not the only one. Granddad wants to go, since he’s been coaching Olive through her routine, Sheryl doesn’t think fifteen year-old Dwayne should be left in charge of Frank, so they can’t stay behind. Dwayne agrees to go once mom promises she’ll give her permission for flight school. The solution is a road trip in a Volkswagen T2 Microbus. And comedy ensues.

With money tight and logistics impossible, the entire Hoover family crowds into a VW T2 Microbus.

That is not to say everything that happens is fun. Granddad spouts out advice to Dwayne, to have sex with as many girls as he can, like a broken sprinkler, not caring who might overhear, Olive. One would think there have been previous opportunities for this kind of advice, but it’s the inappropriateness of his timing that is funny.

When Sheryl offers to learn to drive a stick, in order to help with the driving, she manages to break the clutch. With an older van, in the middle of nowhere on a weekend, the prospects don’t look good for the Hoover family. But the mechanic (Julio Oscar Mechoso) informs them that they don’t need the clutch to shift from 3^rd to 4^th only from 1^st to 2^nd. If they can get the car up to speed, they can still drive the car. So every time they stop, the entire family has to push to get the car started and hustle to get in, since Richard can’t slow the van down. It turns out to be quite funny. And more things will go wrong, as later the van’s horn decides to honk on its own.

With the clutch shot, the family has to push start the van and then run to get
inside. This actually gets funnier as the movie goes on.

Richard, who preaches winning to his family, berates Olive when she orders her breakfast waffle a la mode, French, we learn, for "in the style." He tells her that beauty contestants don’t eat ice cream, a claim that will be refuted later by none other than Miss California. But the rest of the family convinces Olive that it’s okay to eat ice cream, which is delivered well ahead of the waffle and in a separate dish.

Despite her father's warnings, Olive eats her ice cream for breakfast.

When they do stop for gas, Olive goes off by herself to practice her routine. Edwin gives Frank money and asks him to buy him porn and to get himself something, too. While he’s in the gas station, Frank runs into Josh, who is with Sugarman. (This seems as unlikely as Albuquerque being the hot bed of Proust scholarship.) Once they get the van going and are back on the road, they realize they’ve left Olive behind, so they have to make their way back and literally scoop her up as they drive by.

There is no stopping the van once it gets started, so Olive has to run to get on board.

And what is comedy without tragedy. When they stop for the night in Arizona, Edwin ODs on heroin and is declared dead at a local hospital. Now this presents a real challenge for the Hoovers. They cannot fill out all the paperwork necessary to remove the body and transport it across state lines and still make the beauty pageant. Nor can they simply leave the body and pick it up on the return. So when given lemons, they go around the law and sneak the body out the window and into the van. Surprisingly, no one seems to report this to the authorities and the Hoovers make it into California with no problem.

Of course, that’s when the horn breaks and they are pulled over by a CHiPs officer, State Trooper McCleary (Dean Norris). Richard gives him probable cause to look in the trunk, but instead of finding Edwin’s dead body, he finds the porn magazines, which he really seems to appreciate, until they get to the one Frank purchased. But the policeman lets them go on their way. Next stop, Newport Beach.

But there are still problems to follow. One of which is that during a simple passing time in the car activity, it is discovered that Dwayne is color blind. (You might think this would have come up before now). Frank informs him that you can’t be color blind and be a pilot, which causes Dwayne to erupt. When they pull the van over, Dwayne bolts and breaks his silence with a curse word laden rant about how unfair this is and how much he hates his family. He begs them to leave him on the side of the road, but Olive goes down and puts her arm around him and Dwayne quickly comes around.

Dwayne learns that he can't be an Air Force pilot, because he is color blind.

The Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant is really creepy. The girls are too made up for their age and look more grotesque than beautiful. Not that Olive isn’t cute, but she is not in the same league (good or bad) with these hideous girls. The Hoovers barely get there in time and with a car you can’t slow down, Richard does some very tricky and dangerous and illegal maneuvers to get them there. They are late by a few minutes and Pageant Official Jenkins (Beth Grant) refuses to let them register, despite their pleas and Richard literally getting down on his knees to beg. However, her disgruntled assistant, Kirby (Wallace Langham), is willing to let five minutes not be that big of a deal.

One of these things is not like the others. Olive looks natural next to the other contestants.

As the contest goes on, Dwayne, Frank and Richard come to the realization that Olive doesn’t belong here, but Sheryl is insistent that it’s up to Olive and she wants to perform. While the rest of the talent has been marginal at best, no one is really ready for Olive’s dancing or her musical choice, Rick James’ Super Freak, which is presented in an extended remix. While she is really not graceful, it is the over-the-top suggestiveness, no doubt choreographed by Edwin, which alarms Jenkins. But Richard gets on stage to prevent the MC (Matt Winston) from trying to usher her off. In fact, the whole family gets on stage with her in a sudden show of unity.

The family gets on stage to support Olive's dancing.

The Hoovers are nearly arrested, but are let off with the promise never to enter Olive in a beauty contest in the state of California again. This is something the entire family can agree on. After run starting their car and nearly rear ending Jenkins (who inexplicably would leave her pageant before the Hoovers do), the family is back on the road, their horn blaring as the film ends.

It's been a long two days. The Hoovers are nearly arrested, but allowed to leave.

This is a very strong ensemble cast and they have to be to carry the film. Abigail Breslin was only about ten when she played in this movie, but she had been acting in films since she was five, first appearing in Signs (2002). She plays a very natural little girl in the film with bigger ambitions, which might not have been too much of a stretch for her. She continues to act, most notably she did some voice work in Rango (2011) as Priscilla and she was Valentine Wiggin in Ender’s Game (2013).

Paul Dano had a tough role, expressing himself without speaking for more than half of the movie. While he wrote down his dialogue, he was still able to convey what his character was feeling through facial expressions. Dano received individual attention as an actor for his portrayal of Paul Sunday / Eli Sunday in There Will Be Blood (2007), receiving a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He was also in another strong ensemble in 12 Years a Slave (2013).

Toni Collette, an Australian actress, pulls off the part of a normal American wife and mother pretty well. She has been acting in movies since Spotswood (1992), but her big break was playing Muriel Heslop in Muriel’s Wedding (1994). She’s been nominated for an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress for the role of Lynn Sear in The Sixth Sense (1999). She also appeared as Tara Gregson in the Showtime series The United States of Tara, created by Diablo Cody and ran for 36 episodes from 2009 to 2011.

Greg Kinnear, who got his start on TV, some might remember he used to host E’s Talk Soup from 1991 to 1995, moved to the big screen in Blankman (1994) playing, of all things, a Talk Show Host. He received a lot of attention for this performance as Simon Bishop in As Good As it Gets (1997). Other memorable roles include playing Bob Crane in Auto Focus (2002) and voicing Phineas T. Ratchet in Robots (2005).

While the entire cast is good, I think Alan Arkin and Steve Carell stand out. Arkin plays a say-whatever-I-want-to character as good as anyone. He’s been playing crotchety for quite a while now. The first example I can recall is Peevy in The Rocketeer (1991) and the latest being Lester Siegel in Argo (2012).

Carell, who is hit or miss with me as an actor, really hits this performance out of the ball park, so to speak. His underplayed portrayal of a gay man and his deadpan delivery of some of the funniest lines in the movie make him the most watchable of the actors. When he gives Dwayne advice, during the pageant, it is funny, but at the same time comes across as genuine and heartfelt:

Dwayne: I wish I could just sleep until I was eighteen and skip all this crap-high school and everything-just skip it.

Frank: Do you know who Marcel Proust is?

Dwayne: He's the guy you teach.

Frank: Yeah. French writer. Total loser. Never had a real job. Unrequited love affairs. Gay. Spent 20 years writing a book almost no one reads. But he's also probably the greatest writer since Shakespeare. Anyway, he uh... he gets down to the end of his life, and he looks back and decides that all those years he suffered, Those were the best years of his life, 'cause they made him who he was. All those years he was happy? You know, total waste. Didn't learn a thing. So, if you sleep until you're 18... Ah, think of the suffering you're gonna miss. I mean high school? High school-those are your prime suffering years. You don't get better suffering than that.

Taking a break from the contest, Frank gives Dwayne some advice about life.

The film is also well written. Started as a lampoon on the Arnold Schwarzenegger quote, "If there's one thing in this world I hate, it's losers. I despise them,” the film takes a very dysfunctional family on the car trip from hell, which most of them survive. The film relies on the characters Arndt creates and how they react to the situations presented them by the story. Dysfunctional is rarely this much fun.

The film was a huge success, raking in over $100 million worldwide on a budget of about $8 million, and was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture (losing to The Departed), and for Best Supporting Actress (Breslin). The film did win for Best Supporting Actor (Arkin) and Best Original Screenplay (Michael Arndt).

While I will admit a certain resistance to watch the film, oftentimes movies that receive as much hype as this one don’t live up to expectations, I am glad we did. The film is at times laugh out loud funny and at other times poignant and sweet. Not a film for the entire family, its R rating is well earned, though I wouldn’t say this was a hard R by any stretch.

Seen with an appropriate group of adults, Little Miss Sunshine is well worth seeing. While I can’t say it will make you cry, it will make you think and it will definitely make you laugh.