18 Years of ‘Little Miss Sunshine’: Why It’s My Favorite Film of All Time
Ah, yes. 2006. The year Taylor Swift’s debut album released and blew up the country charts. The year the Wii console dropped and scared me into thinking I was obese (thanks a lot Wii Fit). The year Pluto was downgraded from a proper planet to a rinky-dinky “dwarf” planet (Still don’t agree with this one by the way, NASA).
But something else defined 2006. Something that would change my life forever. I was seven years old at the time, but a cinematic masterpiece released that year that I’d only come in contact with nearly twelve years later. A little semi-independent film came out, one of chaos and love and heartbreak and grief and hope all riding around together in a bright yellow VW bus. The film in question? Little Miss Sunshine.
Directed by husband-wife filmmaker duo Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, the film consists of the dysfunctional Hoover family trying their damndest to make it to California, as Olive, the family’s youngest member, is given her shot to compete in the regional “Little Miss Sunshine” child beauty pageant. The family members are as follows: Richard, a desperate-to-provide and often inconsiderate father…
