Little Miss Sunshine

[I know. Two films in one week is obscene. I am trying to dig out from some major burnout and movies seems to be the right thing to do.]

Since WiseMan came with me to see Niceland, I went to see Little Miss Sunshine with him this evening. The trailers had been kind of funny, and we wanted some laughs. Turns out, though, the trailers are pretty much the film in a nutshell, the rest is pretty boring.

Olive lives in a typical American (i.e. dysfunctional) family. Pretty much one of everything here except gun-toting patriot. She want to take part in the Little Miss Sunshine Pagent and makes it to the finals. The family ends up driving many miles to get there, experiencing many comic (and boring) scenes on the way. Grandpa is a dirty old man, brother Dwanye likes Nietzsche, Uncle Frank is a failed gay academic who tried to commit suicide and failed, Dad is a failed success-salesman and Mom tries to keep the family together.

Some nice scenes of landscape. Some really horrible scenes of little girls dolled up like Miss America contestents singing sexy songs (this is so true to life to be painful). A touching rendition of "America, the Beautiful". A lot of cussing (mostly by Grandpa).

The funniest thing is the ratings: in Germany, free for children from the age of 6. In the USA it is rated "R" - under 18 only when accompanied by parents. The American kids in the row in front of us enjoyed the show much more in retrospect when they realized they had just seen an "R"-rated film. But there was nothing to "see", just a lot of sexually explicit swearing.

Strange country, the US of A.

Film rating: not worth seeing.