Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch Little Miss Sunshine
2006 · Valerie Faris · Little Miss Sunshine on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 4 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Count how many times the family push-starts the yellow bus. (staging)
The broken clutch forces all six Hoovers out onto the asphalt, running, shoving, leaping in. Dayton and Faris stage it as physical comedy and then keep restaging it.
Payoff: The running gag is the film's whole argument in one gesture: people who cannot make the world obey, going anyway. In the reading: cinema of the body. The reading calls this cinema of the body: meaning carried by what bodies do, not by what anyone says.
Notice how often Suhrstedt keeps all six Hoovers inside one frame. (camera)
Inside the van and out, the camera composes for the group rather than cutting to single faces. Bodies pack into tight, comic arrangements with nobody given private space.
Payoff: Holding the family in one shot keeps their collective dysfunction visible instead of splitting it into separate problems.
Listen for the accordion and strings entering on the highway stretches. (sound)
DeVotchKa's Eastern-European sound, braided with Mychael Danna's score, lifts the road sequences into something wistful. Then the music drops out for the silences of a household that has stopped talking.
Payoff: The score tells you the trip is sad before any character admits it, which is why the jokes keep landing sideways.
Watch Paul Dano's Dwayne communicate without speaking. (performance)
Dwayne's vow of silence means notepads, glares, and posture. Dano plays a full character in gesture while Kinnear, Collette, Carell and Arkin talk over each other around him.
Payoff: His silence makes you read bodies instead of lines, training you for a film that ends with dancing rather than speeches.
Look at Richard's motivational posters, diners, and pageant surfaces. (setting)
The Nine Steps world, the antiseptic roadside interiors, and the spray-tanned pageant all gleam. The Hoovers and their dying bus look shabby by comparison in every scene.
Payoff: The production design stacks the family's worn authenticity against the glossy surfaces of American success culture. In the reading: consciousness of clichés. The reading calls these dead images clichés, and the film moves through them knowing exactly how hollow they are.
Once you have seen it
Track every plan a Hoover makes and what becomes of it. (structure)
Richard's book deal, Dwayne's flight school, Frank's professional standing, Grandpa's survival. Each hope gets dismantled by a phone call, a diagnosis, a chance encounter, a motel morning. Nobody's effort changes anything.
Payoff: Six hundred miles produce no victory, which is the point: the journey holds the family together long enough for something other than winning. In the reading: the voyage/balade form. The reading calls this the voyage-balade: a trip that used to drive the plot and now transforms nothing.
Watch Martin crosscut between the stage and the pageant audience. (cutting)
As Olive dances to Super Freak, the cutting keeps returning to horrified faces and officials, escalating discomfort shot by shot before the family climbs up and the rhythm breaks open.
Payoff: The editing builds the squirm deliberately so that the release into communal absurdity feels earned rather than cute.
Watch Kinnear's Richard climb onto the stage and start dancing. (performance)
The winner/loser man, who has spent the film selling Nine Steps, puts his body next to his daughter's routine. The others follow. No one explains the decision.
Payoff: A posture, not a speech, overturns everything Richard believed, which is why the ending sticks.
Listen for the moment Super Freak drops into the pageant hall. (sound)
After two hours of accordion and strings, Rick James arrives. The collision of a child's routine with adult source music is the engine of the scene's comedy and its horror.
Payoff: The needle-drop makes the pageant's own sexualization of children audible by pushing it one step too far.
Carry this in: Watch the push-starts. The same family that runs the bus back to life climbs onto that stage.