I finally got around to watching "Little Miss Sunshine" this weekend. I think it's the best family movie I've ever seen. No--not the best movie FOR families, but the best one about a family.
I recognized the intense mixture of anger, tenderness, fear, hope, stupidity, understanding, misunderstanding that is family life. These emotions flash by--yes, within a 48-hour period--and are still underpinned by love. "Little Miss Sunshine" doesn't overdo any single one of these and is also quite good, for a movie, at showing characters' gradual and meaningful change.
I've cried at plenty of movies, and laughed at plenty, and done both at a few. But this may have been the first time I simultaneously laughed and cried. At the movie's outrageous climax, it reached right into my gut, right for my primal instinct to protect my children from the knowledge that the rest of the world doesn't love them. I will fail at protecting them thus, as I must, but at least I hope to succeed in showing my love for them.
So when it was over, I went upstairs and lay down beside my four-year-old and cried some more.
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